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How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System?
thesolo asks: "Despite past efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States remains one of only three countries (others are Liberia and Myanmar) that does not use the metric system. Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. Attempts to get Americans using the Celsius scale, or putting up speed limits in kilometers per hour have been squashed dead. Not only that, but some Americans actually see metrication efforts as an assault on 'our way' of measuring. I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating. Are we so entrenched with imperial units that we cannot get our fellow citizens to simply learn something new? What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do? Are there any organizations that we may back, or any pro-metric legislators who we can support?"
About 4 kilogulags worth of forced punishment for not using the metric system would do it!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Looks like *somebody* is about to get a visit from Homeland Security...
If you want to use the metric system in your research, then use the metric system. What's stopping you?
Why do you need the government to change the speed limit signs if your problem is interoperating with scientists?
Clear, Dark Skies
...nobody here uses metric. Everything is in miles rather than kilometres such as all of our traffic signs for distance and speed and I don't know anyone who uses metres and centimetres for measurements - it's always feet and inches when buying anything in hardware stores for example.
How many cubic inches make up a gallon?
:-)
Since he calculation using the metric system is really easy
It's a question of money. Soft metrification, like changing the labels on retail products, is easy. Hard metrification, which is redesigning everything to use standard metric sizes, is considerably more difficult and expensive.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
just like changing currency... Still using Fahrenheit is just plain weird. I just wish the USA wouldn't push that date format of m/d/y on the rest of the world .. now that is confusing (use y-m-d )
What is the reason for this change? As another poster has said, if you want to use the metric system, just use it.
Most, if not all of the problems I deal with (mechanical engineering) have systems and specifications that are in metric units now. Most (nearly all) national standards I deal with are already in metric units. CAD and analysis systems can switch units without problems.
What use is it to change units for the general population? Is there a need to buy apples in Kg? Or gasoline in Liters? Medicine is specified in Mg. Engine displacement is shown in Liters. Should 2x4's be 50x100's?
Well, I am an American living in the UK. The UK officially uses metric but all the road signs and speedometers in cars use Miles per Hour, all distances on signs are also in miles, people still count their weight in Stones, and I can still buy pints at the pub. I wonder if we should still count the UK as a metric using nation.
Penis size is bigger in centimeters than in inches.
Canada.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Were already half way there. You cant work on a car or anything without metric tools. Science class used metric measurements when I was in high school in the late 90s. Were getting there slowly, just a matter of time.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I'm currently studying Physics in the UK but come from one of the most SI countries in the world, Luxembourg. When talking to people I discovered that even though the UK has officially gone metric most people still think in imperial units when it comes to body weight and height, liquid volumes, speeds and distances (long and short) and those who I asked said they found it hard to picture 170cm or 70kg, very common numbers which I find extremely natural, much preferring "feet/inches" and "stones".
I must admit however that the foot is a very appealing unit in that it can be easily measured using common body parts such as the hand-elbow distance or the foot.
I think the problem is that the parents who grew up with imperial units use them in day to day conversation, hence associating different benchmark sizes with specific words in their children's developing minds, making a natural transition to metric quite difficult, but certainly not impossible... i guess the situation will improve once britain follows ireland in getting the traffic system metricized.
1) Force all business to use metric whenever anything is sold or advertized (this doesn't really cost anything).
2) Only teach metric in the schools.
3) Wait 20 years.
4) Make it illegal to use the old units for anything at all.
Somewhere along the line you'll get profit:)
Until you get to step #4 we (world - United States, Liberia and Myanmar) can make fun of your contortions and strange conversion factors that need to be applied to do even the simplest thing:)
Quick, tell me how many miles per gallon 40 rods per hogshead is, if you can do that without looking anything up then you get to keep the old system, otherwise you will need to convert.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
From a link on the freedom2measure site:
Sexist
The metric system has been almost wholly created and standardized by male scientists and bureaucrats. At the time, during which women were considerably less liberated than today, woman had virtually no say in the creation and, in many countries, the imposition of these units. Perhaps, if they had, the value of the practical units used in those tasks undertaken by woman at the time would have been recognized.
I can understand trying to make a point against the metric system, but this!? Any other real arguments won't be taken serious anymore..
Not to mention that I doubt women had any say in the current system.
home
Start with the schools. It will require quite a bit of initial investment, but it is the only way to introduce a new mindset to the public. You'll need to replace a LOT of textbooks (maths problems will need to be posed in metric terms, same for science books, etc) and all of your measuring devices will need replacing with metric versions (throw out those yard sticks and replace them with metre rules). If the kids grow up learning metric terms, they'll see the benefits of simplicity, easier unit conversion, and so on.
Then comes the tricky part: legislation. The resistance from the lazy public and business will be incredible - it'll be seen as one extra unnecessary expense - but it has to be done. It must be a legal requirement that wherever an amount is shown in Imperial, it must also be shown in metric.
That should be enough to get the ball rolling, but it's a long process, and - as the poster above pointed out - it may not stick right away. The UK has used metric officially for many years now but go into a hardware store and they'll still sell you a length of 2-by-4.
It may take many years to kill off Imperial measurements, but I think those are the two most important steps to affect the change.
Read the good book. Did GOD tell Mosers to buld his arc 140 metears long? No HE did not, it was 300 cubics.
Keep the whitehouse white, vote Trump & Palin 2020.
Back in the 90s there was a big push for government agencies to switch to metric. At least one state was even planning on updating speed limit signs.
Personally, I think this conversion might have stood a chance at working if *everything* had been switched all at once. Instead what I observed were things like new construction projects were let specifying the use of metric units and old ones specifying the use of English units did not change. So you had people working with metric on one job and English on an other - and often getting them confused and mixed up. Eventually everyone gave up on the metric stuff, but I am fairly sure there are still a number of these "metric" contracts out there!
The UK is kinda a bodge at the moment. Road signs and speed limits are all in miles per hour but that's based more on the awkwardness of converting signs. Pretty much all other aspects are legally metric:
Price per kilo at the grocer's.
Filling up the car with litres of petrol.
Prices at the supermarket quoted in £s per kilo.
There's a few exceptions to this, namely buying a pint in a pub and road usage. I want roads to go metric, i grew up being taught metric and haven't a clue about most imperial units.
Your penis may only be five and a half inches long but thats 13.9 centmeters!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Have varous weights and measures used in every day life reported in both metric and English measurements. In many cases, it already is and the practice just needs to be extended. People of the U.S. aren't nearly as shocked and confused at the presense of a metric system based measurement as we once were. The original push for the metric system (to my knowledge) happened when I was a kid. All the schools started handing out all these metric based measure devices and tables and the like. The vast majority of the U.S. has already been educated past shock. We just need to institute some more policies for "dual language" printing (another thing we're already accustomed to) and eventually, we'll be weened from the English measure system. We just need some nudging is all.
No one will ever know.
Actually, I don't know anyone here who use cubic centimeters. We use ml (milliliters) which makes the conversion even more obvious.
And yes, it convenient to be able to compare the price of four containers with 500 ml each, with one container with 2 l, without having to use a calculator.
I will leave it as an exercise to the interested student how to convert between cubic centimeters and milliliters.
Old houses don't go away.
Right, because there are no old houses in Europe. This is why they have successfully converted to metric.
Your argument is flawed.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Canada switched to the metric system decades ago. Being a British commonwealth for such a long time, of course most of us were well accustomed to Imperial units. I still remember as a kid, how my Mom was one of the holdouts for the Imperial system for a long time. She would tell me to get a quart or gallon of milk, and I would have to ask her how many liters that was.
The thing is that the metric system is officially used everywhere. Road signs, groceries, public schools, the works. The only basis that we have for even knowing the Imperial system is our parents. I've used the metric system my entire life. I know my height and weight in feet and lbs, but couldn't tell you what it is in metric units. But I can guess fairly accurately how much something weighs in kilograms, but I'm not so good with pounds. Likewise, I'm more comfortable with measuring things in meters, rather than feet.
A rather amusing story though. I am currently living in the US, trying to get by without using the old ways. I am not always successful. But I try. Anyways, I was on the phone with my Mom the other day, and she asked how warm it was here. I googled the answer, and got it in Fahrenheit (46F). I laughed, and said she would be right at home here, and gave her the answer in Fahrenheit without doing the conversion. I was rather amazed at her response. She told me that it's been so long since she's used the Imperial system that she's forgotten it. She honestly didn't remember what 46F was.
Anyways, my point is that it doesn't matter if the older people don't use the metric system. Teach it to the young, and switch the entire country to the metric system on all official items. It will all sort itself out in time.
Change the country's name to 'France'... oh wait... prior art...
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I find it very telling that, noone here has wanted to be first in welcoming their metric using overlords.
No, it should be a 5.8 x 11.6.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
You don't.
No matter how much of an advantage you can get from Metric, there will always be resistance for change from people who are more comfortable with what simply works.
I'm 39 years old.
When I was in elementary school, it was time to panic: 'The metric system is coming!!!!!!1!!one!!eleven!'
So they tried to teach a bunch of kids how to convert between inches and meters and yards and kilometers and... A whole bunch of conversions involving multiple decimal places... As well as lookup tables, because who's going to remember all of the conversion factors?
Only that's utterly useless as a teaching device. If you want people to work in millimeters, you give them a metric ruler and ask them to measure things, duh.
Decades later, street signs still read in Miles per Hour, cans of soda are 12 ounces, but at least big diabetes-inducing bottles are measured in liters.
Finally, on the inch: It's not such a bad system of measurement. I've gotten into machine tools (lathe, mill, etc) recently, and machinists use their own system. The inch is the basic unit, and is essentially divided up in a metric fashion. When a machinist talks of 'tenths', he or she means tenths of a thousandth of an inch. That's plenty calculable and intuitive and very very precise indeed. Oh, and screw thread measurements make a *lot* more sense in the Imperial system than with the metric millimeter pitch measurements. That's not due to the measuring system of course, but due to the definitions of the standard sizes, which are far more intuitive. I can see why (back when hand-machining was far more important in the USA) there would have been considerable resistance from the manufacturing sector, and I'm not even stopping to consider re-equipping all the machines with updated change-gears, lead-screws, and dial wheels.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
In Britain we use both systems. But you might be interested to know that some imperial systems are alive and well but under a metric camoflage. Pipes are measured in imperial, a world standard, (BSP) as is the thread on pipes imperial and both are accepted even in France! Unfortunately we can only buy pipes in metric here in the UK but in France you can buy in imperial. It is a mad mad world.
Changing to the Metric system wouldn't mean dropping the Imperial system entirely. In Australia, inches and feet are still used by tradies (carpenters, shipwrights and the like) as a quick and easy way of guestimating the amount of materials they need, and etc. Also, practically everyone here knows their height in feet and inches as well as centimeters.
We also still use holdovers from imperial measurements in everyday speech. For example: "Terrigal is miles away from here." It would not mean radically changing the language. America already uses the base 10 system of counting with their currency, which is very efficient, so I don't think changing would be that big a deal.
However, once again, the main factors in delaying the implementation of the metric system will be peoples ignorance and apathy, as well as a feeling of "We've always done it this way." I can understand the feeling, it is a law of physics that matter generally wants to keep doing what it is doing already (inertia I believe). Unfortunately, just because you CAN use your fingers and toes to count doesn't mean that a calculator isn't a better device for quick addition and subtraction. (That was just an example, albeit a crude one, I hope I don't get modded down by the dreaded Math Nazi's)
Ninjas use italics.
In Australia we've been metric for 40 years. We managed the switch fine, and you could too. Sometimes I have to read old building plans that contain sizes in imperial. It really isn't a problem.
The actual timber sizes haven't even changed very much, we just label them differently now. A 2x4 is now a 100mm x 50mm.
...it's about National Security (TM) and mention something about how your brave, young men and women are leading the way. Make sure your flag is on display in the background, and explain how this is truly an American thing to do.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
There are a number of ways to respond to this question...
1) "I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating."
So? USE THE METRIC SYSTEM, then. *Nobody* is stopping you. I work for a European-HQ'ed paper company, and corporate is constantly dealing in square meters, while our customers are asking for things in thousand-square-feet units. Should I wring my hands and moan piteously about how complicated this is? Or is it perhaps easier just to learn the conversion rate(s) and become skilled at quick mental conversions?
There are hundreds if not thousands of industries in the US that commonly and regularly use Metric system units every day.
2) In a larger view, the difficulty in getting people to switch is symptomatic of our long-BROKEN educational system. We've had a system that accepts the production of stupid adults for a half-century; is it a surprise that much of the American electorate is, well, stupid? For 40 years, 'enlightened' social-promotion educators have insisted that there is no educational canon, no set of knowledge that's necessary to be a functional adult. Every time someone would say "look, maybe it's useful if we insist that all children must know X or must perform at Y level of aptitude before graduating", a chorus of voices (generally from the Left) would claim that was merely being classist, ethnocentrist, racist, or somehow a vague assault on the inherent value of whatever child didn't get it.
Couple that with the capitalist overreach into the educational system (going after the Right now), from corporate sponsors pumping millions of units of sugar-pop and crap-snacks into nutrition starved teens, up to the ability of college athletes to skate through education because of their financial contribution to the school, and you have a recipe for disaster.
We need to return to elementary schools that teach the basics, and REQUIRE a certain level of aptitude before graduation.
We need to have a post-secondary system that doesn't require the first 2 years to be remedial college-prep education.
We need to have colleges insist on a specific canon of educational requirements for all students, and dispense with the boutique specifics that suit some tenure-protected professor's ideological goals.
Then, perhaps, in 20-30 years we can rebuild a working democracy, with an enlightened electorate capable of making intelligent choices.
-Styopa
I'm 28 years old and British. My teachers at school taught no imperial measurements at all, it was a 100% metricated education. The only imperial measures I use are miles, mph and mpg for planning long road journeys.
and since you can't drive more than about 800 miles in this country without falling into an ocean, that's hardly a concern.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
It's all metric but for a couple of cases. Cars and roads being the notable ones. given the cost of changing all the signs at once it's easy to see why. The UK government should just begin introducing km signs to replace old ones.
Everybody here uses metric daily (including you) and it works just fine.
Deleted
The distance-to-the-next-town and speed limit signs within 10 km of Montpelier, Vermont on I-89 are listed in km and km/h. It doesn't seem to have caused a collapse of society or an epidemic of people driving 105 MPH on that section of road, so perhaps Americans can figure out that sort of thing after all.
Forcing todays workforce to switch exclusively to the metric system would have a huge impact on productivity, an impact I don't think corporate America is ready to foot the bill for.
This isn't like asking everyone not to wear shirts with naked women on them to work, this involves requiring people to forget what they've been taught & have practiced for years.
I started working construction jobs when I was 16 years old, I know first hand how much chaos would come if everyone was required to learn how to use a tape measure differently.
The only feasable way to convert the US to the metric system, would be to exclude the imperial system from being taught in schools, produce assembly robots/ect that use the metric system, & get everyone the ability to quickly get conversions anywhere via services like that which Google provides.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I'm in Canada, we made the switch when I was a kid, and I went through school learning only metric. My parents don't know metric, and continuously convert in to imperial, since thats what they grew up with. So from personal experience I can say that the change takes a full generation, and leaves a divide between young and old in its wake.
As long as there are people around who didn't learn metric in school, there will be resistance, so the change will actually take that long. Highway speeds will have to be posted in both for 10 years or more, and even after that, every highway speed sign here has "km/h" under it as a reminder. America needs to start the switch, and then go 20 years without electing a backwards, reactionary government that will reverse the switch. Is such a thing possible?
Reality has a liberal bias
If you can find a chart of the old terms of English units of measure, you'll find everything was half or twice the the next unit of measure, i.e. 2 cups equal a pint, 2 pints equal a quart, etc... Most of the units have fallen out of usage so it's not as obvious anymore. The only advantage of metric is everyone is used to decimal fractions vs. binary fractions. I have a digital caliper which automatically converts between english and metric but it's difficult to whether a decimal measurement in english corresponds to a corresponding standard english size. E.g. is something closer to 15/64 or to 1/4? I have fractional caliphers which give an analog readout in english fractions and it's a lot easier to guess from that than from the digital calipher.
The big problem is mixing standard sizes from english and metric when some of them are close. Most pc's use a mix of M3 metric and #6 english screws which are different enough to keep straight. Once in a while you find some odd component with #4 which might look like M3 if you're not careful and you get some nice cross threading there.
"especially at GM with their ubiquitous pushrod 3.8 L V6 engine."
That engine pretty much sums up everything wrong with GM. It doesn't require any words, you just look at it and you know why they're getting their butts beat for the last few decades.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Why bother? Seriously -- why bother? What real, practical value is there in forcing the general public to use one arbitrary (to them) set of measurements versus another arbitrary set of measurements? What does the public's use of miles, Fahrenheit, pounds, and acres have to do with business or government? Sure, sometimes there are mishaps when using mixed units, but they're rare enough that their widely-published details stick out in your mind because it's so rare. A good engineer realizes that units are arbitrary and can work with whatever measurement system she's given. Besides that, whether my car gets 22 mpg or 7.2 L/100km doesn't have an impact on people in the laboratory or the layout room. The scales, force gauges, and AutoCAD all switch back and forth effortlessly. Businesses already use the metric system when it suits them (it usually does). In fact our American units (they're not imperial units) are officially defined by the NIST in terms of metric units. Our land surveying system west of New England is irrevocably tied to the use of feet and acre systems.
I'm working in Canada now. Despite the fact that their government forced metric units on them, do you realize that virtually everyone (well, immigrants from metric countries notwithstanding) continues to use Imperial units (in this case, they are Imperial units -- 4.4L/gallon, etc) in their daily life? It's 82 outside, not 28. I weigh 190, not 86. I had a fever of 101, not 39.
What's really strange is working in Mexico, where they never officially use US units. Milk is sold in galones (gallons, yup, right on the label). Talking about small measurements is quite often done in pulgadas (inches). They don't use millas (miles) in normal conversation, but they all seem to have a general sense of what they are. Yardas may be well know because of American football, and Fahrenheit makes no sense to them, but they're fairly well versed in libras (pounds).
Me? I like the metric system, and use it where it makes sense to use it. But going through the expense of wholesale conversion to the metric system makes no sense and will cause more problems than it solves. Think of the sheer amount of measurements that would have to change. There's the mundane -- 37" TV's will have to change. But what about construction materials? Plumbing? Lumber? Fasteners? What about highway sytems? Exit signs, mile markers, speed limit signs, maps, documentation? The US survey system, then? Acres, townships, counties, baseline locations, meridian locations, title and deed documents? What about food packaging? Why eliminate US measurements when metric measurements are already there?
Interstate 19 between Tucson and Nogales, Arizona is labelled in km/h for some inexplicable reason. Is there a benefit to anyone there?
--Jim (me)
It's right there under "Related Stories", NASA will go Metric On the Moon
http://www.space.com/news/070108_moon_metric.html
Personally, the only compelling reason I've seen to use Imperial units is that they tend to use other number bases (12 inches to the foot, 16 oz. to the lb.). These other bases have many more common factors than the metric base 10
12 is cleanly divisible by 1,2,3,4, and 6
16 is cleanly divisible by 1,2,4, and 8
10 is only cleanly divisible by 1,2, and 5
This makes working with common fractions much cleaner in imperial units, which is desirable if you don't use a computer to calculate everything for you.
3/8 = 0.375 in metric
1/3 = 0.333... in metric
If we were to come up with some kind of hexadecimal-based metric system (which would make transition to computer binary cleaner), this might go away, and then we'd just be left with the gut feelings of "horsepower" sounds "stronger" than "kilowatt"
The US gets a lot of flack for not using the metric system, but honestly, we're not the only ones (and I don't mean Liberia and Myanmar).
Just recently a friend from Canada (Montreal) astounded me when she stepped on my scale and complained that she had no idea what it meant, since it used kilograms. She told me that she thinks of her weight only in pounds, and that, furthermore, clothing measurements (like the waist and inseam on jeans) are measured not in centimeters, but in inches. I don't recall if I asked whether she measures her height in feet+inches or centimeters.
But honestly, what difference does it make, anyway? Sure the metric system is great, I rather like it. A cubic centimeter = 1 millileter, and if you fill it with (pure) water (under 1 bar of pressure at 4 degrees centigrade) it weighs exactly 1 gram. How cool is that? But really, it doesn't make measurements any more or less accurate to use one system or the other. All Americans learn metric in school, anyway, last I checked. So who cares what we use?
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For one simple reason => football Until football stops being a sport, the metric system has zero chance. "It's 1st and 9.14400 from their 32.00400 line, and Manning drops back to pass" just doesn't have the same ring.
The Celsius scale is calibrated to the freezing and boiling points of water. This is great for scientific use, but comes at the expense of sensitivity for day-to-day use. It is seldom that anyone wants to know the temperature outside as a fraction of the temperature required to make water boil (though the freezing point is of more use), and temperatures in habitable areas of the earth seldom exceed 50C. That means the upper half of the scale is not being used. Since a Fahrenheit degree is finer-grained than a Celsius degree and the endpoints of the scale more closely match the range of habitable temperatures, it makes more sense to use F outside of science and cooking, IMO.
I'm in agreement on use of all other metrics.
Or how much force would it take to accelerate a 2kg object at 5m/s^2? SI uses the same base units for all of it's units so such a conversion is simple.
I don't know where you work, but as an American scientist/engineer myself I always use metric in my professional work. Meters, kelvin, kilograms. In school (chemical engineering) we often worked with pounds and gallons since they're common in some industries, but we were thoroughly drilled in how to convert between units.
I honestly don't see the problem with using Imperial units in daily life as long as professionals use metric in their work. In many parts of the country, roads are spaced one mile apart. Converting to metric won't change that. Refrigerators are designed to hold a gallon of milk. Converting to metric would mean either misfitting jugs or odd quantity containers.
Let the public use Imperial units. They happen to be useful for human-scale measurements. Just be sure to teach students that metric is the professional system.
AlpineR
The original effort, back in the 70s, was poorly done. The schools wasted a lot of time, money and effort on teaching kids how to do conversions, rather than simply getting everyone familiar with the units. Millions of pocket conversion tables were given out. It was all useless and misguided, because there was no real incentive for people to switch.
Gradually, however, manufacturers have been changing. As another poster has observed, soda bottles are increasingly in liters and half-liters. Same with orange juice. All bicycles, even the ones made in the US, are metric, now.
I work for a major semiconductor manufacturer and we started doing everything metric in the early 80s. All the components in the computer in front of you are designed using metric dimensions, right down to the microscopic transistors. Electrical units (volts, amps, watts, ohms) have always been metric.
After all, does one size always fit all? (It just popped into my head. I have no idea if it has any relatively helpful meaning or not.)
I mean, we're inching towards it all the time!
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
The problems in the past is they try to make gradual migrations. Having the English units big and the metric smaller. then switching the size. The problem is these units create odd variants. If you have a road speed limit at 60 Miles Per hour and you say it under it 96 KPH People are going to see 60 and equate that easier. What they need to do is think metric first then give English as a fall back until poeple get use to it. So it should say 100 KPH 62 MPH That way they can equate metric as the easy system and english as the more difficult one.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
what would happen if we all were forced to use roman numerals for math?
industry has no problem with it either, as if you use metric parts then you have to use metric tools and that only helps to sell more metric tools., etc..
Maybe we just need to get rid of choice and become generic whatever, but then the drug industry would have a problem with that...
My choice is to use hexidecimal. Why? because I deal with computers. And I truely think since the world is going computer, every one should use hexidecimal, regardless of whether they are translating it to metric, imperial, binary, decimal, 1/16" scale, 5th, etc.
I mean what does it matter what language you speak, so long as you have your universal translator implant. You do have yours don't you?
"Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy."
Seen the US industry, economy, and market performance lately? Seen theirs? I rest my case.
I wholeheartedly agree that we US'ers should go metric. But not for the reason stated.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
How big do you think a 2x4 is? It's not 2" x 4", you know.
The original article said that there are only three countries still using Imperial; make that at least four. Belize uses very little metric. Speed limits are miles per hour, temperatures are in Fahrenheit, most paper is Letter and Legal, weights are usually pounds and ounces, and lengths are in inches, feet, yards, miles. Areas are in acres. Being formerly British Honduras, we even call our fourth-of-a-dollar coin a shilling.
Vincent: And you know what they call a... a... a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is
Any scientist worth their salt will be working in metric regardless of where they live. What difference would it make to the typical American?
If you use a different system when precision matter than you use in your daily life, you are more likely to overlook mistakes.
We have had that discussion at work, do we use mm/d (the common unit) for rain intensity, or do we use m/s which is the "pure" ISO unit? The advantage of using pure ISO units is that there is no risk of conversion errors. Nonetheless, I prefer the first, if I see that we had 60 mm/d I immediately know that this is a huge event (for Danish conditions). And that 600 mm/d is almost certainly an error. If I see 5.2e-7 m/s I'll have to convert it first, and an error is much more likely to slip through.
Shooting deer is amoral because -- well, because they remind me of Bambi. Since no measurements were taken, you can't say the deer was a specific yardage away and using yardages makes me have to remember how many feet and inches and so forth are in them. So, when we talk about abstract concepts such as unmeasured distances between a Republican and a murdered animal, we'll use metrics, since I can then turn off my brain and just shift zeros. It amazes me, the correlation between Replublicans and things I don't care for like being successful at business or enjoying sports. That makes me fear that there is something much deeper than just the statistics and that those kinds of people (you know, the poor and uneducated you see in the aid commercials) really are different from us intelligent and morally superior Democrats.
I will vote for the candidate who aligns himself with keeping my state of being constant and comfortable so I can easily attend the rallies against the capitalist oppressors of the world's people in my mini-SUV.
I agree that it would better serve our needs to change to metric. When I was going to post my first reply, I was going to say something to the effect that as much as I agree that we need to change, I admit I would have a little trouble doing so. But then I got to thinking...if we suddenly changed everything, what's the big deal? If I didn't have to convert gallons to liters at the gas station, Fahrenheit to Celsius, inches to centimeters because everything was already set, it wouldn't be so bad. I'm sure it would only take me a few weeks to get used to the idea that 0 degrees celsius is freezing (we already know that) but that 27 degrees celsius is actually comfortable to me. Yet, we stick to these standards and rather than go through the brain power to convert to metric, I'll stick with what I know. It really wouldn't be that bad if we'd just do one swift change. Drive 65 MPH on the highway? Fine, get used to driving 104 km/h. Easy.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
A school district in Massachusetts today voted to remove all references to "imperial" and "metric" from their science and mathematics curricula, after complaints from a parent that 'cubits' were not receiving equal time in the classroom. A spokeswoman for the district board said today that if scientists themselves cannot agree on the matter...
The most visible change would be all the road signs, which would cost a bundle just on their own and cause quite a bit of confusion in the meantime. But do you have any idea how my machinery and infrastructure is built around the imperial system? Even if you could convert (at great cost) everything, you still need it to maintain products like cars or houses, and if you thought the Y2K thing was a hassle, how about adjusting those unlabeled numbers in your databases from one system of measurement to the next?
After WWII it probably wasn't too hard to convert to metric, since there wasn't much infrastructure left. The US on the other hand was going full blast. Even the UK had a lot of intact industry by war's end.
And for the record, imperial units (feet, miles, gallons, fahrenheit) are standard in aviation worldwide.
If you really want to convert to metric, take it slow. Force one major industry at a time to adapt their infrastructure, and let the smaller industries adapt themselves around them. E.g. food distribution and labeling, then aerospace, then automotive, etc. Hell, you should probably only force new companies to do so, and you'll need to offer incentives to the older companies to change. Or demand that any industry reports to government and stockholders be given in metric, and let the pain of audit keep them in line.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
The metric system (SI) is awkward to use in some common cases because it requires more digits than Imperial for common precision or range. First, consider temperature. Indoors, 20C can be too chilly, 21C too expensive to heat, and 69F just right. Outdoors, 33F is still above freezing, but the equivalent 0.6C is cumbersome. Next, look at speed and length. On a limited access highway, 100Km/h requires three digits, yet in miles per hour all posted speeds in the US require only two digits. Ten inches spans many more everyday objects than 10cm.
Democrats tend to try to push us to metric and Republicans squash it. There are two events I remember.
One reference I found to support last point
The metric system is legal for trade (and anything else) in the US and has been since 1866. If you want to use it, use it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Join the fight against metrics! :)
We don't want no foreign rulers!
Whenever Mrs. Fitch breaks wind, we beat the dog.
The metric works best if you have a strong grasp of place value and decimal notation.
The traditional system works better if you are good at fractions.
So, teach more about decimal notation and place value, and, if necessary, make up the time by teaching less about fractions (especially adding the stupid things) - although the problem is not that people succeed in learning fractions, but that they fail to learn decimal notation.
Teach the meaning of the centi-, deci-, milli- prefixes, powers of 10 and standard form. Don't chant "10 milimetres 1 centimetre, 10 centimetres 1 decimetre 10 decimetres" as if it were something arbitrary that had to be remembered, like inches, feet and yards.
While we're at it, can I recommend the European system of paper sizes, where each size is made by folding the size above in half? US letter encourages people to make lines too long, anyway.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Hey...so far 100 cents equals one dollar. They're working on it. ;)
It's probably the closest the US will get, but hey, can't change TOO fast now.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I'm a young fellow from Australia, and I guess from my perspective growing up in a metric society perhaps has given me biased for the way we measure things. Our Television so saturated with American television has acustomed me to seeing your world in imperial measurements. There's just something about an American house built on inches compared to an Australian building built in centimetres - I guess it comes down to culture. At the end of the string though, we are slowly moving to a globalisation - the ability to communicate, travel and live throughout the world without headance means that more than ever we need to communicate and collaborate together in the most efficient way possible. I know this is a very idealistic view on the world, but surely we will all eventually have to start working together to reach the same goals - renewable power, elimination of poverty, global harmony. There is certainly room for both standards and I'm sure if America moved to metric, Impreial would be a common association in describing physical characteristics. Almost all people in Australia know their height in feet and inches, building materials are still sold in inches - whatever happens, I'm sure the old way will not be forgotten with the incredible data collection of todays society it surely will not be forgotten. Perhaps we should look at what would be best for the world instead of what works for our country. Heck, if that meant the world went Imperial, I'd be all for it, it is just the time that it takes for our Governments to gell together enough to figure out what is best - for all I know, it may be better to keep going the way we are, really we have made it this far without any major short commings. Everyone has their beliefs, and it's my view that everyone has the right to believe whatever it is they want to believe. As long as this is the case, there will always be a fight about who is right and who is wrong.
The SI unit for time is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cs-133 atom.
If you can't remember this simple fact, you are not worthy.
Oh please. I agree with the rest of your post, but you can't argue that imperial vs metric is about diversity vs uniformity. It's quite clearly being argued because of the difficulties in conversion, not some assault on the brave USA, willing to stand alone from the metric crowd of sheep.
Well, as a maths student, I would prefer to ban degrees and keep radians. Radians are actually useful to work with.
Oh come on! How does no one see that this is a troll?
Just tell them they'll weigh less in kilograms than in pounds!
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
After having to do engineering in the imperial units, I thought when I swithed to a more sciencey field of study and all metric, life would be easy factors of ten. But alas, it is not so. there are in fact two metric systems, MKS and CGS, and they are not different by factors of 10 in units involving electomagnetism. In fact, under the two different systems, the equations of electromagnetism gain or lose constants depending on which system is used. So much for easy powers of ten....
Incidentally, while 12 pt. is exactly 12/72 of an inch, it is also 12/182.88 of a centimeter. What is even more astounding is that this defines a PPC resolution which will not enlarge your selection boxes at all. Your point is saved!
If you change measurement units, it becomes impossible to use your reference system. This is why people resist changing to metric.
The same thing happened in Europe with the conversion to Euros. At the beginning, you didn't automatically knew whether 10.000 was the price of a house or rather of a car. For things you come often across, it is fairly easy to build up a new reference system in the new measurement unit. However, for rare things, this is much more difficult. I notice many people use and think in Euros, unless they start thinking about buying a house. Then, they start out in their old currency. Once they have seen a few houses, they learn the relation between price in euros and property value and they start thinking in euro's. As a sidenote: I used to work together with American scientists at NIST and they all used metric units (of course, it was NIST, so if even they didn't use it...)
I personally do not understand how you can do sciency and engineering in an imperial system. It is working on a disaster waiting to happen. Endless conversions are needed to calculate derived measures, like torque, energy, and momentum. There are hardly any means to check for correctness.
An additional problem of the imperial system is the lack of uniformity.
How much is a gallon? 4.5 or 3.8 litre? A pint? A pound?
I write all my software using SI only. Before I did that I often had unexpected outcomes. Now, if the algorithm is correct and I use the correct formula, the outcome is right.
There is no need to drop the use of imperial measure, but it should only be allowed for informal use. In science, engineering, and trade the use of SI measures should be compulsory. If the USA starts converting this year, all will work perfectly in 2030, without additional costs.
One of the reasons the metric system was adopted was not just for uniformity in science calculations, but to make business easier by adopting international standards for weights and measures. If a country did not convert, they would have a rough time dealing with all the others who did. Most converted, the U.S. did not.
The problem with converting to metric now is that the U.S. has enough economic power that businesses in other countries are perfectly willing to bend over backwards and make the non-metric conversions in order to do business with us. The U.S. will only convert to the metric system if and when an economic disaster reduces our economy to nothing, while leaving most of the rest of the worlds' in a relatively unscathed state, and therefore able to renegotiate contracts with different terms. (Of course, the global nature of the economy makes that exceedingly unlikely to happen, which is about how likely it is that the U.S. will convert to metric in the foreseeable future).
1 US gallon = 231.000001 cubic inches
Everyone knows that Google does this, right? I put in seach "1 gallon in cubic inches" and this is the result. You can do this for just about any units, there really is no reason to post things like "what's that in real units?" when you can so easily convert between anything.
Just for example, I asked:
"speed of light in furlongs per fortnight"
and I got the handy answer:
the speed of light = 1.8026175 × 10^12 furlongs per fortnight
So why doesn't the US change? Because the advantage of using a metric system over not having a metric system is very great compared the relative advantage of using one particular metric system (like SI) over another (and the costs of switching).
I am not a crackpot.
Exactly. If I'm at the grocery store, and I need to integrate a trigonometric function in order to determine how much milk I should buy (seeing as how you can roughly approximate the demand during the day with a sine curve), and I'm stuck with degrees, it'll be hell to integrate, when compared to radians.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
The snooty arrogance in this thread is astounding.
There is no doubt that if you are designing a system from scratch, the metric system is superior.
There is also no doubt that if you are in science and engineering, you should be using the metric system.
But for every day use? It does not matter one tiny bit. Whatever accurately supports commerce is really all that matters. And the Imperial system works in the US.
Some dirty secrets for you all who think the rest of the world has adopted: a lot of the Commonwealth nations have adopted the metric only in an official capacity. Go to the UK and see how often you see Imperial units.
>>Length and weight are easy
I take it you mean lengh and mass.
>>Tell me, what's the metric unit for time?
It's the second. If you have ever taken a look at the MKS system (Meters, Killograms, Seconds), it makes physics so much easyer. All units can be expressed in MKS units.
1 Joule is the amount of energy required to raise 1kg to a height of 1m.
1 Newton is the unit of force required to produce an acceleration of 1 meter per socond on a mass of one killogram.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Saying that converting to the metric system would bring us in line with the rest of the world is actually a DISINCENTIVE to many Americans that want to maintain some level of uniqueness.
Just use metric system in your daily life. Perhaps you haven't noticed but this is pretty trivial to do in the USA.
Don't be shy about using metric units in conversation with others. If you hesitate you are part of the problem and not part of the solution.
Use metric only with your children. Take them to another country so they can see what "normal" looks like.
If you are waiting for the government to force the issue you're going to be waiting quite a while.
The kids who were in school in the 70's and 80's are the ones who have the obligation to start the ball rolling. We have done so in many areas of government and commerce but we need more progress in the popular culture. The next generation can take the next steps but we have to pass this on to them.
Agreed.
Have a nice diurnal anamoly.
The opposite of progress is congress
Don't you mean 0.0508 x 0.116 m?
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
Pints of beer? Thats your argument?
If so then you have lost.
We manage to buy pints of beer quite nicely, eventhough noone alive in this country has ever used pints for anything other than to buy beer in english pubs.
Customary American Units are an abomination, it's a bloody mess and the only reason you can't see it is that you have been steeped in it since birth.
Everything is harder with CAU, except comparing new bits to old bits.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
By NOT telling them the French invented it, or by calling it "freedom system"
I live in Australia, where metric has been the official measuring system since the early 1970's. However, a lot of imperial measurements do unofficially live on.
:)
For example, you're more likely to hear the weight of a newborn baby in pounds/ounces than in kilograms, but for everyone else, it's always in kilograms. Height is more commonly expressed in feet/inches than centimetres, some lengths are more common in feet or inches (yes, like yer penis). Beer measurements are based on imperial (sometimes rounded to nearest metric units), as well.
The most common ones would be feet and inches, easier to say 2 feet than 60.96cm
A strange thing is, though, that although our CRT TVs are almost always measured in centimetres, our computer monitors and all LCD TVs and monitors are measured in inches.
Erm, care to reconsider?
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
My brother-in-law works for a road construction company that frequently bids jobs for the NJ Department of Transportation. A few years ago the DOT tried to convert its construction jobs to the metric system.
It was a total a disaster. While the DOT management and construction management thought it was a good idea, the grunts on the ground doing the actual work screwed up constantly. Jobs took longer, simple tools like tape measures became useless and needed to be replaced. Bridge parts needed to be rebuilt due to conversion errors. Materials orders were frequently incorrect resulting in delays or wasted material. The confusion permeated every aspect of the process.
The costs and productivity losses proved excessive for the perceived gain, so the idea of using metric was scrapped.
If one single government department couldn't make it work, how is the ENTIRE country supposed to make it work?
-ted
So In US and the other two countries, E does not equal mc^2?
Can't all American Scientists simply get a calculator like this one that can convert units (even obscure ones like R!) and simply use it whenever in touch with metric-unit scientists?
There are two kinds of people - those who are radioactive and those who have already decayed..
As far as font conversion, you can still use points as a unit of measure, or an identical standard by a metric name, simply because fonts never need to be remeasured. I, on a regular basis, use metric measurements for graphic design while using points to measure my font.
I think it's interesting that the yard is defined in meters.
The metric system is just a theory! It has no place in schools... It's a conspiracy I tell you. First they take away our origins with that Darwin's theory now they want to take away our measurements... May God bless you with a tinfoil hat.
I think, therefore you are.
So let my summarize by saying "Who will think of the rulers!" (And steel mills and pipe fittings and rolling mills and everything I'm ignorant of)
Say, what do they prefer to measure, umm, size in, centimetres or inches?
I must agree, George Bush has a golden opportunity for a solid policy win, and a chance to get something other than Iraq and September 11 in the history books.
Switch to metric. There will be resistance from the populace that is satisfied with the status quo, but metric is more sensible from a design standpoint, it makes greater sense from an industry and economic standpoint, and really it won't be that hard. The best part is he might find some of his former detractors backing him on this one.
Just make available drugs sold in units of kilometers and celsius. Americans already know grams from "private experience", mostly learned in college.
And get utility companies to sell service in real metric. What good is a "kilowatt-hour", when it's base 3600? How about just "megajoules"? Make car companies rate engines in kilowatts, not "horsepower" (probably the best example of America's imperial anachronism - how powerful is a horse, if not in watts?). After the kilometers have sunk in, with highway signs in both miles and Km for a while. Then just Km, first local roads then interstates, as public polls show we know the distance in each state. That's the time to switch car ratings over to Km:gallon. Then Km:liter - we already drink in liters, now that America's beverage industry is owned by global Europeans. Probably take 10-12 (er, 10-20) years.
Too bad, because celsius isn't as intuitive as fahrenheit (even if it's easier to spell). 100F is clearly too hot, 0F too cold. In the middle third, between freezing and air conditioning, we wear more clothes in its lower half, and less in the upper half - the extremes belong to the machines. Maybe we should switch to celsius below 33F/1C and above 66F/19C, and make the machines do the math. Eventually we'll get the feeling for the middle third, even if its 33C degrees are too big to precisely describe our most immediate condition.
The key is to introduce it gradually. Switching to the whole new system makes redneck Americans feel like Europeans are taking over. And since we buy ammo in powers of two, like the ancient British system we still worship, it's obvious that we'll shoot first and add 32, multiply by 9/5 later.
--
make install -not war
This whole thread, indeed this whole article posting, is a massive troll.
Apparently it's a slow-topic day at Slashdot and/or they've been asked to drum up additional banner revenue to finance another name change for 'VA Whatever-it-is-they're-shilling-now.'
I don't actually the problem with using non-metric units - I'd say Imperial, but US measurments are actually different to British Imperial measurements; the US Gallon is slightly larger than an Imperial Gallon, for example - for everyday measurements.
In the UK we still use miles for measuring distances, mph for road speed (boats use knots), and pints for measuring things like beer and milk. People are still damn annoyed about being forced to use metric for loose goods - I have to say I'm one of them; I still think of loose sweets in multiples of 1/4lb. I end up working out how many I want in lbs, then convert it to metric. People tell me distances in km and I just look blank, I have no point of reference for them (as someone else mentioned). We still measure height predominantly in feet and inches and personal weight in stones and ounces (we skip pounds, interestingly).
Even with the metric system it's not entirely standardised; dl are used a lot on the continent, you rarely see them in the UK, we almost always express liquid less than 1l as ml, e.g. 500ml not 5dl.
Metric comes into its own in things like international trade and science/engineering, where they already used in the US and pretty much anywhere else with any sense.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
>>I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis,
I think you're full of crap.
Professionally, both my wife and I deal with scientists and doctors from all over the world and all of the work we do and collaborate on is done in the metric system; as is almost all science.
Really, when was the last time a real scientist measured anything in ounces or inches?@!
I'll probably get modded troll for my post but then again, this article is a troll too.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
Why hasn't the second been used as the basis for a hundred-unit hour? Can't we also then have a ten hour day?
Astronomy doesn't work like that? We can't adjust the earth's rotation to match the fact that we have ten fingers and ten toes??
...Is ignorant people.
If we (Americans) were to convert to the metric system in everything, people would still work in the Imperial system and think they were working in the metric system. A good example would be speed limits. People look at the signs and passively notice them and sometimes follow them. When you convert 55 mph to km/h you get about 88.5 which would probably be rounded up to 90. When some idiot sees 90 on a speed limit sign, he or she is not gonna look at the km/h below it, nor will he or she look at the small km/h units on the speedometers of cars, he or she will look the large ones, the mph units and then we have a bunch of jackasses thinking it's legal to drive 90 mph. This will be a way for many people to get out of the many tickets that would follow, and it would be a continuous problem even if new cars were manufactured with the position of the mph and km/h were switched because that would not be a feasible reason for people to buy a new car.
And that's only one example, there are plenty of others. I do recognize the ease and scientific superiority of the metric system, but converting the U.S. to it would probably be pretty monumental and right now doesn't seem feasible. Just my thoughts.
I like the way metric/imperial measure is done in Canada. While "officially" we are metric. Road signs are in km and km/h. Temperatures are done in C, except in Windsor ON. Extremely large or extremely small values are metric "Human" sizes seem to have remained imperial. If you tell someone you are 165cm tall, they will give you a blank stare and cars are advertised with MP(US)G ratings even though we never used American gallons. You still buy 2x4s (not 5x10s). Wall studs are 16" apart, not 40cm.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
As an engineer, I would prefer to keep Degrees. It's a lot more useful to me than radians, since I deal with differing radii.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
In spite of the fact that the attempt itself was a conclusive failure in that it didn't convince anyone to "get converted" it was successful in the sense that we are all quite familiar and somewhat comfortable with metric units. I'm a product of that 70's attempt.
We're a long way off from KpH road signs and "keys" on our gas pumps, but there was some success in getting the ground broken. Any future efforts will meet much less resistance and will likely be more successful. The war will be won by conquering specific areas one-by-one. As you mentioned, many specific areas are already exclusively metric. We just need to get some more public areas metric.
And as for bicycles? I still see them sold with inch sizes for wheels.
I'm guessing you're a norwegian. Am I correct?
To know both systems of measurement. I do, and yes, I'm under thirty.
I know metric, and I know the conversions between imperial and metric. I use metric myself if I'm doing calculations on my own because it is easier.
But you know what? Screw you measurement snobs. I like my gallons, miles and pounds.
I want my power plant measurements in PSI not KPA, Farenheit not Celsius, and gallons per minute are fine by me. The engineers seem to keep everything humming along just fine with imperial units, and I operate it all the same.
By all means teach the metric system alongside imperial units. People can learn multiple languages, so a few conversion factors aren't that hard.
Now that we've established that, we can take a look at the educational system. Competent schools already teach both, and incompetent schools suck on so many levels the metric system should be your least concern.
Go find something worthwhile to do. A crusade to impose the metric system universally is pretty high up one the list of worthless endevours.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I can see a reason in switching to metric for some scientific and industrial applications, such as the dimensions of various computer components perhaps, but not for speed limit signs or the weather reports (actually which can be given in both measurements). I have the philosophy that no one measurement system is the best for every use. I actually find fahrenheit to be preferable, I think inches and feet seem more practical and natural for everday use, it is something about the size of the units I suppose. Perhaps it is due to the fact it is what I am used to, but I do think the units seem more convenient in some cases. I actually tend to use both metric and english measurements (like NASA :-) ), and am familiar with both, and use which one is most convenient for the task.
I always thought that the only reason why the US didn't switched to metric
was this one: If God Wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would
had only taken 10 apostles.
seriously, folks, everything you buy new has those funny foreigner fasteners in it. has been that way for almost 20 years. including made in US, designed in US products. every hardware store has big racks of metric stuff now, and a full line of tools in metric.
it's been done. we couldn't export if we didn't do it. so stop whining. get your 250 mL flask of schnapps out and swig if you have to (yes, hooch went metric 10 to 15 years ago, too) but you are METRIFIED! your car is in liters, your weight is in KG, and your blood sugar is in mG/dL and the insulin is in mL volume injectables if you drive to the doctor and complain of evil plots from outer space to take your inches and pounds away from you. the rubber room thickness is measured in millimeters.
now get out there, and fight for your last 25.4 mm of personal space.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Bullshit. In almost every metric country, type is measured in points. Certainly from my personal experience, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, India and the UK, which are all metric in most respects. There are proposed metric units to measure type, but they are not offically part of the SI. And the idea of a font "size" is actually fairly arbitrary and fuzzy. It's generally defined as the smallest line spacing so that the descenders of one line do not collide with the ascenders of the line below. But there are many cases where this rule is violated. Consider it more like women's dress sizes rather than relating to a specific dimension.
Of course, we can thank Adobe for embedding their definition of the point = 1/72" in PostScript (which is slightly larger then the older traditional point.) Page sizes however are often quoted in mm.
However, I suspect you are trolling. If so, well done. I also have to suspect that the site linked in the summary , http://www.freedom2measure.org/ may be a parody.
Could anyone write that stuff seriously?Ok, units of measure for volume, distance, weight, yea, metric rocks. But lets face it, celsius is not dramatically any better than Fahrenheit. In fact as a gage for human relateable temperatures in weather Farenheight is vastly superior. 0 is f'n cold and 100 is f'n hot...what better range is that? I feel totally shortchanged in other countries when I have to deal with the measly tiny little range of temperatures. I mean come on! How can you get any satisfaction at being hot at 40 when you could complain about 100. Now thats a number to be hot at!!! So what is water freezes at 32? Im from Iowa...trust me 32 is still warm. Its not cold untill your under 20
Besides whats so magical about Celsius anyway. Its just as arbitrary as Fahrenheit. somebody just picked a range based on water..so what? and it doesn't even hold up in higher elevations where water does NOT boil at 100.
Oh man, you're cruel! :-D I wonder just how much trouble you'd get in if you actually did something like that. But a fake file, appropriately labeled, in a glass-windowed frame (think fire alarm switch) would be a very humourous thing to have on the wall in such a place!
"Good news, everyone!"
If I had a mod point available I'd totally reward that Ghostbusters reference.
It is probably a good thing that the USA still uses imperial measurements. Since it is one of the fastest growing and most successful economies not to mention one of the key sources of innovation in the world. It is a good thing the USA is "handicapped" or the country would be assured world domination. One of my personal issues with converting from imperial to metric is that I would have to go back and totally recalibrate my beer consumption limits. I know how many pints I can handle before I fall over. I have not idea what that point is in liters. Hmm, now that I think about it the calibration process isn't really that bad. OK, bring on those liters!!!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
weird that this conversation pops up after the one on shoutwire. as always, reading user comments on slashdot makes me want to smoke crack.
At gunpoint. Unless you can convince the Regime that if we stick with Imperial, the terrrrists win..
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
An alternative definition is 1/2,325th of the time it takes Windows Vista to finish booting up on a 2002-era PIII PC.
Uh, so multiply by the radius?
Seriously. s = r*theta works with radians, and doesn't work with degrees (where you need s = r*theta/360). I don't see what working with differing radii has to do with anything, at all.
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
If you need to think about trigonometric functions to determine how much milk you're going to drink, maybe the problem is somewhere other than metric vs. imperial.
As I see it there are several approaches to take:
Trivia:
- A Swedish mile according to the rules of 1665 was 10688.54 meters.
- A Swedish mile after 1889 is 10000 meters. (not much difference from earlier. (Most swedes use the mile distance today meaning 10km, sometimes to amuse or confuse the people that thinks the British distance.)
- Anders Celsius (English) used originally a reversed scale with 100 (positive value) representing the freezing point of water and zero for the boiling point. Later this was reversed to use the scale we know today.
- An inch as we know it is 25.4 mm except for the US survey inch that is 25.40005 mm. Other countries have had inches too with other sizes.
And finally - let it be known that it's much easier to market the products for export if they use the metric system. Don't mind the "Freedom2Measure" extremists, there will always be conservationists for whatever reason.And don't forget - standardization of measurements in our international world will decrease the risk of being ripped off.
From what I have seen, the metric is a standard in the US too, but it's just filed as an amendment to the other standards and not replacing anything.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
jaymz
while I am from a country where they primarily use SI system, I have no problem adapting to the mks/cgs/imperial units. The first lesson that one learns in any science class is to make sure that your units are consistent. If companies like Boeing/DHS are losing money, its not because they used inconsistent system of units, its because people are too lazy to check their units.
... ... guess no one will like it after all even 24 hrs are not enough to make up a day ...
... will keep everyone happy ...
It does take some time to appreciate the magnitude in different units, but it keeps your gray cells working.
If people are so crazy about the metric system, why not change the definition of minute, hrs,
so now you have 1 min = 100 sec, 1 hr = 100 min, 1 day = 10 hrs
On the second thought why don't we just change mks to read miles kg and second
Metric is already the official standard of measurement in the USA. While the Government lacks the influence to convert the general population, perhaps Wal-Mart can do it. After all, their products aren't made in any countries that _use_ Imperial measures. I'm sure they have solved the conversion problem and should share that information with Homeland Security.
But then again, Wal-Mart did fail with pushing the gold dollar coin. But for that to have succeeded, the Government needed to stop printing dollar bills. Once Wal-Mart completes their takeover of the Government (they can start with NASA and DHS, um, no need to involve Immigration or the FTC), perhaps coercion of the general population can be the success proponents of metric adoption hope it o be.
I, for one, welcome our new Retail Overloards . . .
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
The biggest reason is the number of syllables in the equivalent measurements: yard (1) = meter (2) foot (2) = well, meter I guess. inch (1) = centimeter (4) mile (1) = kilometer (4) pound (1) = kilo (2) or kilogram (3) It's pure LAZYNESS that is preventing the large mass of the population of converting.
Move sig!
"The good die first." "Most of us are morally ambiguous, which explains our random dying patterns." --- MST3K
I take it you mean lengh and mass.
>>Tell me, what's the metric unit for time?
It's the second. If you have ever taken a look at the MKS system (Meters, Killograms, Seconds), it makes physics so much easyer. All units can be expressed in MKS units.
1 Joule is the amount of energy required to raise 1kg to a height of 1m.
Oops! Looks like you need to review the difference between mass and weight. A joule is the energy required to apply 1 Newton over a distance of 1 meter or to raise 1 kilogram 0.102 meters at a nominal gravitational acceleration of 9.8 m/s.
> [...] Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. [...]
Imagine how much stronger the world's *biggest economy* would be, were it not so tragically "handicapped".
A draft angle of 5 ±1 deg
or
a draft angle of (0.0277~ * Pi) ±(0.0055~ * Pi) rad
No, really, for engineering angle's are easier. Not because the calculations are much different, but because you'd need to find a hellofalot room in technical drawings for all the angular measurements, and measuring the angles is much much easier in degrees.
Manuals are your last resort only
1 Joule is the amount of energy required to raise 1kg to a height of 1m.
Sorry but I gotta put my physics Natzi boots on:
1 Joule = 1 Newton * 1m
To raise a 1 kg mass to a height of 1 m needs:
mgh = 1kg * 9.81 m/s^2 * 1m = 9.81 J
Ok, what that was supposed to say was:
The biggest reason is the number of syllables in the equivalent measurements:
yard (1) = meter (2)
foot (2) = well, meter I guess.
inch (1) = centimeter (4)
mile (1) = kilometer (4)
pound (1) = kilo (2) or kilogram (3)
It's pure LAZYNESS that is preventing the large mass of the population of converting.
For that matter, why the hell is HTML-formatting the default when posting comments on slashdot?
is it more common to have to make a bold or italicized statement, than plain-text with line breaks?
Move sig!
The problem with the metric system is that it is founded upon the evolutionary accident that the number of human digits is 10. If we really want a measuring system that is friendly to computers (and other extraterrestial lifeforms that we might encounter), then we should drop the baroque decimal systems and go to Base 2. But it is most likely that scientists will resist efforts to go to a more universal measuring system. In the meantime, those of use that work with computers have to constantly translate from decimal-to-binary and binary-to-decimal in order to get our jobs done.
Where it's easy, we use it, where it's a pain in the ass.. we still use the imperial system.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
My theory on why you can't change the general public of the U.S. to the metric system is football. That's American football with the helmet and pads. It's big over here. From the small towns to the big cities people are fans. Yards are so ingrained in the game, and so much money is at stake that they will not change it for fear of turning people off. It sounds stupid, but if there is a large change in terminology, there would be a large amount of resistance to it. I believe the non-sports fans (of which I am one of) are outnumbered by the sports fans.
For this to happen, the US will need a major addition of brains.
ok.. lets be real about this, the US economey engine is running strong (another one of bush's faults, damn him). So how exactly does not using the metric system hurt us? humm.. let me think... oh yeah, because when we export stuff we sell it by the foot/yard instead of by the meter.. wait.. how does that hurt us? Oh I know, it's because we sell stuff by the pound (not to be confused with the English Pound) and we don't sell stuff by the Kilo, unless it's something in a white brick for recreational use. humm.. how does selling stuff by the pound hurt us again? oh wait, we sell stuff by the gallon instead of the liter. That MUST be why we are at war in Iraq. Saddam wanted us to buy oil by the liter and not the gallon. silly kids, tricks are for kids.. Get over it their is nothing wrong with the US using the standard system for measurements.
Obama = Socialism.
Fair enough, although I don't see why you need the pi in there if you're an engineer. Try maybe 0.087 +/- 0.017? That translates back to 4.98 +/- -.97, which I would imagine is not any more accurate of a measurement than 5 +/- 1 degree.
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
OBVIOUSLY someone who's never been out on the Autobahn in Germany... last time I was over that way, my little Peugeot rental car was having trouble pushing over about 170 (although I did hit 190 at one point), and the big Mercs and so on were ZOOMING past me like I was nothing...
(for the conversion challenged, 170kph = 105mph)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
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I am not sure, but this is a maybe:
... don't invest in the future global market in the USA, because of the hostage customer (Stockholm syndrome) base of US citizens.
... everything.
... all based on economics in the USA.
... not the unit of measure standard used. How many of us have grabbed something in a hardware, electronics ... store (without reading the spec detail) and got home to find we made a small mistake in our selection.
GM, Ford, GE, GD
Then again they may see no reason for complicating their USA manufacturing processes further by more investing in something that means for about 10 to 20 years their operations in the USA would be using two different measure standards for R&D, E&D
Also, the USA Government does not require the most international common accepted standards (Open or any other) in most (maybe all) contracts as incentive to change.
I think USA business has many good valid reasons
Most customers/citizens only care about the features, functions, performance
We ain't ever had no reason to change?
!HAVEFUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Deleted
Surely the value of 1 rad in degrees remains constant, since there is a direct link between the radius and the distance needed to rotate to encompass an arc of 1 radius (a rad).
Unless the US uses a different rad to the rest of the world, which wouldn't shock me that much.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Wouldn't that be confusing...when I know all I look at is the big ass number on the sign. If you started intermixing MpH and KmpH I think you're asking for trouble.
A US governor was heard oversaying: "It's unfair! They're miles ahead! We're just inching toward the goal." over a pint of lager.
I think you might have missed that the parent was joking..
The pi is needed because 0.5 rad is something totally different from 0.5 * pi rad. It's about, ohw, I'd say a factor 3.14 difference :)
You're right that there's no significant difference between 4.98 and 5, but how would you make a measuring triangle for instance? It would be really annoying to have to measure in parts in Pi/180.
I agree, for maths radians is much much easier, but trust me on the degree for engineering...
Manuals are your last resort only
I suspect he was joking.
It's a chicken/egg problem for me. I don't use metric in everyday situations because I don't have an intuitive feel for the units. But I don't have an intuitive feel for the units because I don't use them every day. But that would be naturally remedied if we just got on with it and converted.
And that would have probably happened back in the 70's when they pushed hard for it, except the people who made the "educational material" had no skill in convincing people it was a good idea. They made the metric system look like a giant pain in the ass. They would convert 3 feet to 91.44 centimeters, implying that somehow metric forces you to be that precise. Three feet is one meter in almost every non-technical circumstance you are likely to encounter. How often do you tell someone that the living room is 10 feet 8.97 inches long? You say ten-and-a-half feet.
I don't even think I'd have much of a problem with any part of the metric system except Celsius. I'd have to convert back to Fahrenheit for quite a while. I know that if it's 45F outside, I need a jacket. If you tell me it's 31C outside I have no idea what to wear until I convert it to 87F and go get some shorts.
yes, keep it, this way the US keep falling behind comparing with the rest of the world by increasing their costs and incompatibility problems... its a great way get their products being ignored all over the world...
all countries that have global influence tried to first enforce and later maintain their "way of living" despite everyone seeing that things have changed... this only helped the fall of their empires
check the history of the Romans, Arabs, Portuguese, Spanish, Holand, France, Austro-Hungarian, Japan, URSSS and UK
the long a "empire" tried to not adapt to the new global rules, the faster and/or more painful they fall
plain and simples, adapt or join all other "empires" and die
the rest of the world doesn't really care
Higuita
Converting between the two shouldn't be too difficult for a maths student ^_^
360 is a useful number for measuring angles because it divides by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, 180 and itself. One of the arguments against metric that I've heard is that it makes it impossible to accurately divide by 3, something that is possible in some imperial systems (but not others - 14 pounds to a stone for example).
Personally I think the solution is to travel back in time, and re-engineer the human race so that we grow 12 fingers.
You'll need to replace a LOT of textbooks (maths problems will need to be posed in metric terms, same for science books, etc) and all of your measuring devices will need replacing with metric versions (throw out those yard sticks and replace them with metre rules).
Textbooks in the United States already use metric units, and have now for decades.
If the kids grow up learning metric terms, they'll see the benefits of simplicity, easier unit conversion, and so on.
Everybody in the United States under the age of forty grew up learning metric terms. Virtually nobody in the United States under the age of forty, unless such person has some specific technical reason for doing so, has any interest in using metric terms in day-to-day life.
It must be a legal requirement that wherever an amount is shown in Imperial, it must also be shown in metric.
This is already the case. A can of cola in the U.S. reads "12 fl. oz. (355 mL)". A bag of microwave popcorn states "1.5 oz. (42.5g)". A snack bar reads "1.59 oz (45g)". No consumer product is sold without both Imperial and metric measurements.
Then comes the tricky part: legislation. The resistance from the lazy public and business will be incredible - it'll be seen as one extra unnecessary expense - but it has to be done.
If the public doesn't want it, and business doesn't want it, then who exactly is supposed to benefit?
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
No, I think you missed my point. I'm saying to just multiply the pi in, which is what I did in the example above.
I also don't see why measuring a triangle requires using parts of pi/180. There's nothing fundamental about 180 besides the definition of a degree. It's just as valid to say that the sum of the angles of a triangle is pi (or 3.14 for engineering purposes), so you have (say) 1.570, 0.795, 0.795 as your angles.
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
Rubbish, I'm British, aged 40, I use metric for more than I use imperial, I don't think I am alone. People my age and younger are generally conversant in moving between the two systems because of our half arsed mix in the UK. I think it would be fairer to say in the UK people generally move between the two informally, but work in metric in formal situations. Skinfitz: can you give us examples of scientific or engineering companies you know that do their work in imperial? I don't think this happens, small places might take on work in imperial measurements but I think they are few and far between these days.
Me and all my mates use metres,cm,mm etc for measurement, that's what the big shops in the UK all use for their stuff. Now your corner hardware store, yes they use imperial but we know the kind of cherished special places they are and the people that run them- they are not exactly the norm. But if I am going to get some plumbing piping or shelving I get out my metric tape measure and work out the maths in cm and mm.
Incidently I drive a 60s car so I have to move between Imperial and Whitworth inches!
I haven't seen it mentioned, so I'll say it here. My work van has about 454 kg of tools in it. That a lot of crap that I would have to duplicate in metric if everything started showing up with metric bolts, nuts, and screws. I'll tell you right now that my van doesn't have space for that increased tool load. I'll also say that I regularly see equipment that is better than 40 years old. It's the back end that really makes it hard to switch to metric. Ask any auto mechanic. Every GM car out there has both metric and SAE bolts in it. It's a major pain in the butt to figure out what you are working on.
Rotating assemblies is where I would have the largest problem adapting. A standard 56 frame motor has a 5/8th inch shaft. That shaft mates to a fan section or pully where thousands of an inch count. So now if I crater a motor and the only thing I buy is a standard metric size, that means I get to replace the fan wheel as well. Now, can I find a fan wheel that has a metric shaft hole that still matches the dimension of the cage it rides in? Am I going to have to replace that fan cage as well? Is the new fan cage with slightly different dimensions going to move the correct amount of air? Am I going to have to adjust the TXV to account for the increased/decreased airflow?
This stuff snowballs really quick. Pretty soon it's a lot like having a hard drive crash. If you are doing the work yourself, it's cheaper to buy a hard drive and install it. If you are paying a tech to put it all back together for you, lots of times it's cheaper to buy a new machine.
Some of us prefer to think of time in natural units. :-)
(Yes, I have only so many TeV^-1 left before I finish writing this post and go home...)
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Oh yeah, Paper. That is great... Last time i was in the US, I had to put a US sheet of paper (letter i guess? 9x11 Inches probably?) in an A4 (21x 29.7 cm or the 4 folding of an A0 sheet of paper if you prefer like that) envelope I carried from Italy.... and guess what, it doesn't fit, so I spent a couple of hours photocopying all the material I carried from italy in 9x11 format, and only then I was able to send my Ph.D. application. Guess application for what: Physics. Guys you can't want to rule the world and be completely outside of it!
I live in the UK and it's mostly metric now although there are few things which you need to be 'bi-lingual' in for older people. Like distances, your weight and height. There's confusion with drugs dealers too. Marajuana is sold in ounces always but coke in grams - same in America I believe.
Tubbs and Crockett always used to go about busting 'kees' which I always thought was very progressive and European.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
As soon as kids enter high school they'll start ordering pints instead of 40's
Engine sizes have been metric for years... people talk about the legandary "5.0" for example... only a few holdouts will call it a 302...
speed? do the canadian thing... put the US system 2/3rds larger or something w/the metric equiv beneath it... which all auto gauges do anyway...
people would think fuel were cheaper if it were 1.39$/litre instead of 3.00$/gallon... they'd see the 1.39$ and shit themselves... if your ig'nant enough to drive a hummer you probably won't notice...
distance... this trips people up the most... if they stopped teaching little kids the us system and had them use the metric system first.... by the time their old enough to start really caring all the signs will use both... and while we're at it lets teach thems spanish and mandarin as well...
when I was in elementary school we learned both systems... but it wasn't until high school that anybody followed up on that... chemistry & physics were probably the first time the metric system was touched upon... and between those times everything had been related to me in miles/gallons/lbs... so the metric bit had fallen out of use...
I use the metric system now when I know I'm going to have to do some kind of conversion... but then again I've been converting mpg-->knots for years so I'm used to it.
I'm pissed that I need two sets of tools though.
follow the leader. "Oh the rest of the world is using it, so should we" blah blah blah. The military uses it: Fine, good for them. Some scientists used it: Let them, it's part of their job to decide upon a measurement system at the beginning of their project time. The general public does NOT need it: We've used Imperial measurement for years and it's suited us just fine. Why even waste our time and energy?
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
An interesting note on machinging:
:
I was investigating the history of interchangable gun parts and found that a lot of advances in machining were due to advances in guns, which was due to military pressure (early computer developement was pushed by military as well.. seems lots of advancements have been). Anyhow I stubled upon this gem.. I had no idea that the yard and foot were standardized on the meter.
From the wikipedia on Foot (unit of length)
In 1958 the United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations defined the length of the international yard to be 0.9144 metres. Consequently, the international foot is defined to be equal to 0.3048 metres (equivalent to 304.8 millimetres).
I can't find it now, but I could have sworn the us standardized a little earlier than 1958 (mid 1800's?) on what the foot was, but still it was defined as part of a meter.
I had no idea the imperial system is defined by the metric system and found it pretty interesting.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Personally I think the solution is to travel back in time, and re-engineer the human race so that we grow 12 fingers
Interestingly, Schoolhouse Rock covered a similar possibility on children's TV back in the 70's. Hell of a concept to lay on kids.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Of course America is converting to the Metric system - we're just doing it inch by inch...
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
Furthermore, there is nothing nice about the sizes of metric units. Nice units are ones that eliminate pointless numeric constants. Using natural units, e=mc^2 becomes e=m. Using natural units, the ideal gas law loses the R constant. Isn't that way better?
Metric is nothing special. For example, the meter is based on an erroneous measurement across France. This bad measurement was used to estimate the size of the Earth so that the meter could be claimed to have a tie to the size of the Earth. (which isn't unchanging anyway, even if it were perfectly round!) We might as well use a foot defined as the distance traveled by light in a particular amount of time, with that time amount chosen so that a foot just happens to match King George's foot.
Base 10 isn't special either. Binary is special, and trivially convertable to the more-compact hexadecimal.
"How can we convert everyone to X"? The /. masses condemn these sorts of questions when X = religion, but when X = the metric system we're OK with it?
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
The OP is a troll? Clearly... you have no idea what you're talking about. I know him personally, and he's the last person that would troll message forums. Try again...
Two sets of standards is economically inefficient and introduces conversion error. NASA famously missed hitting a planet due to conversion error. Not exactly getting on fine.
Deleted
I also can move back and forth pretty easily, but most Americans cannot. The difference between those who can and those who cannot, seems to be that those who cannot see an inch as something that just exists in the world. If you asked them why an inch is as long as it is, they would tell you that it's because that is how long an inch is. Those who can switch tend to understand that an inch is as long as it is because a bunch of people got together and decided to make a word that defined that particular length. Now if your view of the world is that the units and names of lengths are just a made up system that we all agreed to use, you are probably more willing to switch to a different system than someone who sees their measurement system as the "natural" way to do things.
There are nearly 2 F degrees for every C degree.
Adding a decimal place is irritating.
Nope, irrelevant. I live in a 1729 built house in Buckinghamshire (ironically, quite near Milton Keynes, that English attempt at a 60s new town). I used to live in East London in a 19th century redbrick terraced house. Let me tell you, no standard measurements in either. I fitted the entire kitchen in the London house and there wasn't a 90 degree angle in any of the walls, or a length in exact feet in any direction, mm just as useful as inches. Same in the current 1729 house.
Maybe reasonably modern mass produced houses (1900 - 1970, say) might have standard imperial measurements, but in the UK I'd say a lot of our housing stock is *too* old to have standardised fittings. I'd say standardised imperial measured houses are probably a blip...
Should aviation convert, too?
In much of the world, altitudes are assigned in (thousands of) feet, and airspeeds are measured in knots (nautical miles per hour). How many accidents would metrication cause?
There are two things about the metric system that I find are highly overrated.
#1 is the Celsius scale for temperature - 100C is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of water is 101.6kp - would make more sense to express temp in K or better yet, electron volts.
#2 is fixing the gram to be one cc of water at God knows what temperature and pressure - for almost all cases, I'm going to look up the density in a table and it really isn't that much different in dealing with lbm/cu.ft versus tonnes/m^3.
The comment about pipe sizes is a good one - transferring to metric will be a very long process.
I am not a scientist, but I would say it's a little more than slightly arbitrary. Water is all around us, and everybody knows what it is. I would tell you most people don't know what dihydro pentoxy sulfate, so they don't really care how much of it makes up 1000 cubic inches.
Also, you can use decimal english measure, but it still means you have to do conversions, rather then just a decimal shift, if you want it in different units. I would need to look up how many firkins is in a hogshead, but I can convert from decimeter to decameter without ever having encountered either of them before.
It's not fair to point out problems with time units in the metric system - they were just left as they were, and since US uses (thank God) the same time units it doesn't matter for the purposes of moving to the metric system.
As for the rest of your post - yes there are natural interpretations that can be assigned to the old English units, but it doesn't mean they're just meaningful. For instance freezing point of water is much more intuitive and practical reference point than a "cold winter in Gdansk" or a body temperature of one slightly overheated dude.
And for me, the most maddening aspect of the US measurements is the multiplicity of units that can not be easily interconverted: feet and miles for starters, liquid ounces and gallons, etc. That's just plain inconvenient, which is exactly what the British themselves have realized some time ago and switched.
And while the decimal English units are being used in some specialized areas the vast majority of the consumer and construction products use fractions. One has to constantly convert between 13/16th and 5/8th or such. One would think this would make our population math buffs, but that doesn't seem to be the case either.
That's one second, the same as in the good old imperial measurements. Wikipedia suggests older definitions - such as "the fraction 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time" - which are hardly any better.
When I see arguments against the Metric system it's reminds me so much of people arguing why Windows is better than Linux (or anything open source), the argument is about apples and oranges. Linux isn't Windows and Metric isn't Imperial. Sure Metric and Imperial are measurement systems but you can't complain one inch and one centimeter are different, of course they are!
What's easier to remember, there are 1,000 meters in a kilometer or 5,280 feet in a mile?
A cube-shaped box 10 cm on a side is 1 L.
If the box is 100 cm on a side, 10 times as much, it should be 10 L. Oops...
BTW, do you know the time in kiloseconds? Why not?
Probably that was a large part of Adobe deciding to use that. But the traditional American point was 1/72.27", so it was a fairly obvious way to simplify it.
Nevertheless, Apple's 72dpi screen was soon superseded. PostScript, the (PS) Apple LaserWriter and film RIPs, and Aldus PageMaker and all DTP software since are what cemented the PS point.
If Adobe had made, say 1/10 mm, as their point, it could easily have been different. But the times you need to translate points to real-world units are rare enough that no one in DTP is at all interested in doing it now and facing a task greater than Y2K to convert everything.
I've reading all the threads defending Imperial units but the US doesn't use them. Imperial units are so called because they were the units used by the Empire! The British Empire. This means 20 floz to the pint, 16lbs to the stone, 112lbs to the hundred weight (cwt), 2240lbs to the ton, etc...
The US uses their own bastardisation of the units.
Speed limits in europe are actually often higher than 100km/h (motorways are limited to 130km/h -- 80mph -- in france, and some have unlimited upper speed in Germany, which means you can see big mercedes zooming past you at above 200km/h -- 125mph)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
True about the military. And for a bit of trivia bonus, the short name they use for "kilometers" is "clicks", as in "The landing zone is about 3 clicks north of here".
Normally a measurement systems popularity is proportional to it's ease of use, for example look at the Egyptian system of measure in base 60; it's devisable by 12 numbers and thereby avoiding those pesky irrationals that make doing math in your head rather difficult. I will admit that radians have a certain elegance, that's why the military came up with a where they have rounded off the milli-radian to 6400, it introduces a bit of error but it's still close enough for government work; it's not like your selling milk to 5 decimal places.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
First time I have heard the expression "American Units" - can any US readers clarify what you generally call this measuring system (inches, miles, pounds, etc) over there?
I've heard USians call them "English" and over here in the UK we call such a system "Imperial" - though I know there are differences - our gallon is different to yours, you use "cups" for cooking while if using imperial we'd use ounces (that one confuses me a lot, we have lots of different sized cups in the kitchen for drinking out of!).
I suppose it's kind of more honest to call the system "American Units" as its what you guys use... (USA not = all of America is another discussion) - what is the feet and inches system called generally (or legally)?
but I don't use it as a rule. ~Redd Foxx
That's why you specify a decimal multiplied with pi. Treat a full circle as 2 of some unit and use a little pi as a unit sign. In the end you have an intuitive scale for common measurements that also can be read as radians, everybody is happy.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
No, we would use a radius of 1 for standard stuff. However, here is one of the things I have to do and we would have a different radius at just about each point in the problem.
On an XY chart, where x is the real axis and y is the imaginary,
I have to calculate the angles to an arbitrary point from several different points on the chart. So, say I need to calculate the angles to (5,3) (5+3i) and I have a bunch of points scattered throughout the chart. So, lets say I have 3 more points. (0,0), (10,0), (6,1),(6,-1). I then need to add one or more points such that the sum of the angles from those four points and the points I add is 180 degrees. Doing this in Radians would be a friggin pain as I would have to account for the varying distance to the point.
There are a few other details, such as any point with an imaginary component must be part of a symmetric pair (6,1) and (6,-1) are an example of this, with regards to the real axis.
Remember, Radians is based on measuring the radius of the arc. Not on measuring the angle difference. When you start doing problems that don't have constant radii (or something equivalent) it gets to be a pain when doing calculations.
Here's a wiki link on the plot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole-zero_plot
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I live in the USA.
The USA also uses imperial system for everyday things. And, like other countries, we use the metric system for science and engineering.
The US uses Queen Anne gallons. This is what Britian used to use. There was no real reason for Britian to change, but I guess the King wanted bigger jugs...
The group linked in the /. article makes the suggestion that the computer binary system is related to the English system of units. I think it is time for /.ers to let this group know what's up and that the binary system has nothing to do with the English unit of measure. The claim i am referring to is made under the paragraph titled "The base 10 myth". I suggest every /.er worth their weight in binary code to shoot the group an e-mail to dispell the myth they are spreading.
Thank you! I was about to make a similar post.
How is the imperial system is "handicapping" us? If anything, most educated Americans are able to work in units of either system. And as you pointed out, it's not as if we don't decimalize where appropriate. In addition to your machine shop example a more common example would be gun calibers. I'm sure everyone has heard of a .22 ("twenty-two") or a .357 Magnum ("three fifty-seven Magnum") or a Colt .45 ("Colt fourty-five") or a .50 caliber Desert Eagle ("Fifty caliber Desert Eagle"). All of those are expressed in inches. For reference, a 9 mm would be about a .354 caliber gun (simply convert 9 mm to inches).
All of those are in inches but nobody says a "point two two" or "point three five seven" or any weird crap like that. Which is, I think, yet another example of how the imperial system caters more to speech and common units. No one in their right mind says 2 feet 3 and 3/4 inches. If you really _are_ measuring down to 1/4 inch precision then it is 27 and 3/4 inches. Now say you are doing this in metric. Is it 70.5 centimeters? In that case, probably yes. But what if you're measuring 74 and 1/2 inches? Note that that is 6 feet 2 and 1/2 inches but no one would ever say that. Is that now 189.2 centimeters? Or is it 1.892 meters? From an american perspective the centimeter measurement makes more sense to me since that is the unit I'd most likely be measuring. But god knows what the crazy rest of the world does here.
I also want to reiterate your point about fractions. Halves and thirds and fourths and so on are extremely common divisions in everyday life. It's nice to know that a gallon has 4 quarts and a quart has 2 pints and that there are 2 cups in each of those pints. Nice simple division by powers of 2. Should make a lot of sense to a bunch of computer geeks wouldn't you think!? Interestingly enough, all of those can be represented without problem in a binarialized (is that a word?) system. Computers do in fact store floating point as ?/2, ?/4, ?/8, ?/16 and so on with the exception being most good desktop financial calculators which are explicitly designed in hardware to store in tenths and hundredths and so on to avoid rounding errors on financials which are now all decimalized. Oddly enough, the old pieces of 8 system made a hell of a lot more sense from the perspective of trying to store it as a floating point number in a computer.
My guess is that metric is going to take off in the U.S. about as well as Esperanto has. Languages and measurement systems are born out of the necessity for peoples to communicate, not through government mandate under some grand socialistic scheme.
We also use imperial for everyday.
But, what many here don't seem to realize: we also use metric for science and engineering.
Also, we are taught the metric system in school.
The fact is, there's nothing stopping anyone from personally using the metric system in America. If you want to use metric to discuss issues with scientists from Europe, the most you might have to do is a bit of conversion--and there are many online sites available that'll readily swap one for the other if you don't feel like crunching the data yourself. Virtually all modern cars display their speeds in km/h as well as mph (even if mph is the preferred method), and many scales can be set to display kilos, rather than lbs. From an individual perspective, society has made a personal metric conversion completely possible. As for America as a whole... I don't see that it matters. Every nation has specific societal quirks that make it unique, from the relatively small (the uniqueness of Aussie slang, for example), to the relatively large (British countries and former colonies drive on what we consider the "wrong" side of the road). In America, soda from a fountain is always served with ice. In Germany and many other European countries, it isn't. We could argue all day that one is "better" than the other, but such differences are simply a part of culture in specific areas. Sometimes, yes, culture gets in the way of doing what's scientifically smart or optimal. That, in and of itself, however, does not mean culture should automatically give way to science. Using the old Imperial standard of measurement rarely hurts anyone, and metric conversion is readily available. As far as I'm concerned, keep the inches rolling.
Use both for a while, but understand we may never be completely rid of the imperial system. Both systems will be with us for some time.
For example, gas stations could advertise the cost of gas (petrol) in both gallons and liters. Speedometers could give speed in both mph and kph. And speed signs could use both mph and kph. And do the same with other everyday things.
Eventually, we steer away from the imperial system, on post speed limits in kph and so on.
How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? is like asking "How can we convert France to speaking English?" It would sure be convenient if everyone grew up speaking only English, but that's hardly going to convince the French or the Germans or the Chinese or.... "But people often have to learn English to participate in international life!" True...and lots of Americans learn the metric system for the same reason. Americans are actually rather "bilingual" with their units: we have gallons of milk and liters of soda, ounces of meat and milligrams of vitamins, 100-yard football fields and 100-m dashes.
Seeing Imperial units die out in the U.S. would be as sad as watching Welsh die out in Wales. (Knowing the sorts of people here, I imagine many of you wouldn't give a damn about either.)
Failure to give whole-hearted and unwavering support for the absolute superiority of metric makes you a troll.
Born and raised in Canada, which of course is a completely converted Metric Nation, I was taught the metric system in school since I was 3' tall. Now that I'm 6'1", I wonder why I feel the need to describe small distance and weights in the old imperial way that wasn't around in my country for my entire life. My drivers license tells me I am 185cm tall, but if someone were to ask me how tall I am, I would still tell them in feet and inches. I still see myself as 170lbs and not 77Kg. When I'm talking about how far I have to drive or how well my car is on fuel it is always in kilometers. When it comes to volumes I only think in Liters and milliliters. I think the problem being, with me anyway and probably most people, is that their parents, still half stuck in the Imperial era, have unknowingly pushed it upon their children. My father, being in residential construction and of the "old school", would still measure things in feet and inches. I helped him in many a projects growing up and I found telling him a measurement in metric confused the heck out of him so it was imperial all the way. I found myself saying 2.5 inches, which in my head meant 2 1/2 inches but really doesn't work the same if you're not thinking about it as a half. In school it made complete sense and does in everyday life. My problem being is that I can't seem to get over the weight and short distance problem. When I get my hair cut I still say I want it about and inch and a half. When I lift weights I still say I can lift 200lbs. I still tell my height and weight in the old imperial. This has all made me think that maybe I should make a mental note to curve my parents influence so as not to inflict the same damage on the future generation.
As far as the country and government are concerned, Canada is completely metric. You wont find any lingering signs with miles or inches on them, the grocery stores will still have the lbs in fine print to help out the 'old school' but that is the final residue of a country gone completely metric. As for me, I need to work on it still. The metric system makes so much sense in calculations and is all based on water which we can all relate to. Why shouldn't water freeze at 0 and boil at 100 degrees C? It make sense, it's just beating the aftermath of change that is the biggest problem.
well let's see one second is approximately 4.848136811 * 10^-6, i think I'd rather write +- 1' myself
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I read the other day that the Moon missions NASA is undertaking will use Metric, mainly due to the potential of interaction with International Partners. I think this is a good thing, especially seeing how the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost due to a metric/american mismatch in units.
We should remove the state from deciding what units people are and aren't allowed to use. Yeah, I know, metric is better for calculations ... I use it myself ... but you show an ugly, geekish side to yourself when you decide to force people who have used another system for generations to stop doing so: tradition is more important than you think; without a feeling of contiguity with the past, we stop taking the lessons of history seriously. Without that, we don't even have a civilization any more.
Let the market decide which system is better in which situation. What to teach in government schools? Let the parents decide on a district by district basis - like I said, it souldn't be a state decision. Signs on government roads? Keep 'em as they are until the demand for change from the private sector becomes irresistable.
Never get a government to decide such things.
'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man, straightening his shoulders pugnaciously. 'You telling me you ain't got a pint mug in the 'ole bleeding boozer?'
'And what in hell's name IS a pint?' said the barman, leaning forward with the tips of his fingers on the counter.
''Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'
'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half litre--that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the shelf in front of you.'
And if you are ever stumped, the nice people at Google have enabled you to enter a query like "55 mph in km/h" and get an answer right away.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Yeah, cool. Radians. And wouldn't it be neato keen if when pilots need to change the direction of an aircraft, the tower could call out "Golf Tango Fox, come to heading 1.733 pi radians."
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
The US uses the Queen Anne gallon. Queen Anne was a woman.
Maybe you accidentally used the big 25.4 mm?
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I'm sorry, but you didn't understand anything from all those units 'n numbers discussions. We need 16 fingers, not 12. Hex is the one true base.
Or cut your hands off, use your 2 arms and stick to binary.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
I work for a scientific company, everyone uses metric measurement for their scientific work (as does everyone else in the world, no matter what country they're in). Oddly enough, the measure of the speed that our scientists drive to work or the temperature outside have failed to have any impact on the science they accomplish inside the building.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Canada did it. It wasn't easy, probably expensive. But the way I remember it was they all switched one day to have 100km/hr in the center and 60 mph in smaller text below. Soon after, the 60 mph was gone.
Now the thing about Canada is that it has a lot of roads and a lot of signs. While United States is slightly smaller and has more roads, they really don't use a lot of signs. At least where I've been, most interstate highways only have a speed sign whenever the speed changes. Distances to towns aren't known until you're there. Contrast this to where I'm from there's a distance signs are everywhere and close enough together to make you impatient, speed signs after every major intersection (and immediately before every speed trap).
It can be done. It's not cheap, but bite the bullet. When you're done, calculating how long it will take to drive 525 kms at 100km/h is easier than 315 miles at 60mph.
--
Oz
Hmmm. How about 'Simpsons individual stringettes. Absorb water today!'
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I personally don't know any US scientist that isn't fluent in metric, and very few that don't default to it when doing science. NASA might have some issues, but I think that's isolated...
IS a country with leadership that can and will take the time to focus on DOMESTIC issues. As for how this one stacks against the rest, it's a low priority. Not that it shouldn't be addressed -- it's one of my pet peeves. However, you can't address ANY domestic issues when all your money, mental energy, time and focus is going into a war in a far-off land. Look how much domestically has been addressed since 9/11 -- change to prescription drugs in Medicare and widely considered a debacle.
Law of internet message boardery #3867:
When accusing others of being ignorant or lacking in intelligence, it is best to ensure that you use correct grammar and spelling.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
ten fingers would be able to count to 2^10 -1, but (2^12 -1)/3 is 1,365 so yes that would help a lot
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Americans will never submit to a foreign ruler!
Wow, if this is what is feels like to have a handicapped industry and economy then I would think the rest of the world would WANT the US to stay in it's backwater ways. Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
I am sure in time, the politicians and the lawyers will find a way to read this out of the law like they did with all the other amendments, and then this barrier will be gone.
The people who tend to oppose this type thing are the same who have trouble with math in the first place. Do we really need people incompetent in math and science making decisions for the rest of us? That's why liers and CEO's should be allowed to run for public office.
Someone hates these cans.
I've never heard it referred to as anything except for "Imperial" except for on that stupid website, and I know people all over the US.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
I've always heard Imperial measurement. Isn't vehicular speed still measured as miles per hour in England? Oh, 1 cup = 8 fluid ounces.
Seriously, it is scary that it is possible for someone to reason so badly.
Firstly, he claims conversion is implicit and universal despite mars probes crashing because obviously people DO forget to do it sometimes. Then he throws up some rhetoric involving binary and hexadecimal, number systems which are only used in low level computing because of their affinity with hardware with having two general purpose unit systems used in parallel. Then he brings up seconds, minutes, hours and days when anyone who knows anything about metric knows that only seconds are part of SI, the rest should never be used in calculations. Then he claims that points are somehow better than millimeters because he likes his fonts at exactly 12pt and is not willing to have his fonts 5% smaller to make them 4mm but instead NEEDS that extra .233 millimeters to make his fonts JUST RIGHT but doesn't want to be bothered typing it in. Of course if someone wanted 4mm fonts they would need to type in 11.3394pt in the current system, but of course we all know that fonts are especially right when they are at even numbers of points rather than millimeters. What the hell is a point anyway? Millimeters are used in carpentry, particle physics and trade, points are just another unit made up for one purpose that doesn't really need its own system of measurement.
He summarizes in extolling the virtues of diversity. Diversity is great, don't you just love the Gnome and KDE flamewars on slashdot because any given application only really works properly and looks right with one desktop. And how you can't run OSX applications on your linux box. And how there are more BSDs that you can name but only one of them has proper SMP support but it is neither the one that is portable nor the one which is secure nor the one that is modular. You've gotta love the web pages designed around IE's quirks that don't quite look right under firefox. Oh, and how IPSEC has two types of header which can be used with either of the two modes and how nobody quite supports it because it's too "diverse". I can't begin to explain how having two types of high density optical disk has helped me enjoy high definition video so much quicker. Ever tried to hook up the tail lights of a friends trailer to your car and found out the plug is different? Ever bought some electric guismo from overseas but the plug doesn't fit without an ugly adapter?
In art, food and society you have diversity, in science and technology you have incompatibility.
Nobody could be dumb enough to truly think what the OP thinks, though I live in Australia where we switched to metrics in the 60s to the 80s and cannot imagine anyone having any trouble. That is why I think the OP is a troll or just having a little sarcastic joke that nobody got.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
We just call it measurement. ;)
I won't use the term 'Imperial' because it's completely inaccurate, as well as misleading. The traditional system of measurement in the US is a sibling to the 'Imperial' system in the UK, but it's not the same thing. A UK pint is considerably more than a US pint, for instance, a fact which is very convenient when one is fortunate enough to be drinking your Guinness by the former.
I don't like to call SI 'metric' either since that is also inaccurate and misleading. Any unit of measure is a metric. All three systems, traditional US, 'Imperial', and SI are metric systems. Unfortunately, the SI is actually a subset of another metric system, which doesn't seem to have any other proper name available, but probably *should* be called 'Imperial' as it was spread by the French Empire. But I digress...
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Living in the UK and being brought up with both metric and imperial systems, I find that both systems have merit.
imperial for approximation and metric for accuracy.
it all depends on what you need to know.
if you need a rough idea then imperial is great a foot for example is about the size of a typical male foot and a yard about an arms length. temperature is much easier to gauge in imperial 60 is about as cool as i like it 70 is warm and 80 I am sweating already. I couldnt tell you the equivilent metric values I do know that water boils at 100 and freezes at 0, 0 being the important one since it tends to mean ice on the road.
problem with inches is with fractions sometimes its 10ths of an inch sometimes 16ths, 12ths fractions are pretty easy to guestimate half quarter eighth.
precision and converting units metric is easier ideal for precision engineering.
raw materials are best selected using imperial.
However there are some problems with metric its not an easy fit for computers soon as that decimal point gets used accuracy is shot to pieces. imperial fractions fit right into the binary system.
it's purpose that determine the suitablity of the units pints, and pounds are ideal for food when you don't need scientific accuracy for example.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Every US unit is defined in terms of SI these days.
The Imperial system is based on nothing any more or less arbitrary than the Metric system. It's a little less hyped up as being 'Thee System' however.
Hah - I didn't know that US pints were different to British pints.
Then again, we weren't even taught conversion to non-metric units in school here in Ireland; we only learnt metric units. That's despite the fact that our metrication only properly finished with our conversion to km/h for speed limits a year or two ago (prior to that we had km for distance, and mph for speed, with no units on speed limit signs!)
Anyways - we still have pints here in Ireland, good old 568ml beer glasses rather than the continental 500ml. Although I believe the glasses used in Germany are the same ones we have in Ireland - because the head of the beer does not count in the measurement there, but does here in Ireland.
I don't know why soft drinks cans are 330ml though.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
I think you mean the babylonian number system.
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Wherever mountains, rivers, and lakes don't get in the way, every road is on a 1 mile square grid in the western US.
I am in favor of using metric for all science and engineering measurements, but leave our road signs alone please.
It gets tiring when I have to hear it drummed in over and again how wonderful the metric system is, and how it will improve our lives. It's just a measurement system! It makes no sense for us to switch everything for the sake of conformity, when there is nothing to gain.
Besides which, I don't own a yardstick (and I own some old ones!) that don't also have a metric measure on one side. Old mom and pop hardware store yardsticks (one went out of business 35 years ago) are included.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
I couldn't agree more.
:).
Engineers advocating their preferred system really shouldn't have much say in this. If an engineer is uncomfortable converting units, then they never should have made it past their first year in college. And it's funny, because once you leave the realm of science, having units derived from each other really loses its benefit. A meter was originally based on 1/gajillionth of a meridian. The mile, on the other hand, was originally a thousand paces. Which one's easier to use if you're trying to guess distances while you're taking a walk? The thing about the imperial system that everyone seems to forget is that a lot of the units were created for very specific and useful purposes. And when a country converts to a new system of measurement, the ENTIRE country has to convert, not just the small minority that works in science and technology. Why should a baker care if, with metric, an engineer doesn't need to remember some arbitrary constant in a dynamics equation? Even if we did make the switch, both systems would live on in perpetuity.
I just don't understand why this has to be such an issue. Why does the US have to change its street signs? To each his own; we're not hurting anyone but ourselves when our Mars lander flies into the sun
yeah, cars drive in miles per hour here still, we're a right bastard nation! as with most things to do with the EU, the UK has dug its heels in and is slowest to change. There's a big old fuss a year ago when the law changed so all shops (including small market traders) had to sell things in kilos and grams instead of pounds and ounces. A few people fussed, most traders just put both measures and the whole thing seems to have blown over. I reckon people will have moved over in twenty years or so. The change over to decimal money in 1971 was the same, people fussed but got used to it.
:-)
I think we'll gradually move over to kilometres per hour, probably have a period of dual signs or something daft and then go over. It's funny how some things have changed and others haven't. Most people can informally move between both systems with enough accuracy to get by.
Cheers for cup measurement, I gave up after screwing up some recipes by guessing which cup I should use and got a measuring jug which does cups, fluid ounces and ml, hehe
Sure there are benefits, but you've got a fine point -- is it worth the costs? What would metric advocates say to standardizing the world on the English language?
I am so sick and tired of these articles that pop up every now and then about how superior the metric system is and how we should force all public transactions into using SI units. This is probably the main reason why we in the United States still get annoyed by the French even thought they have long since ceased to be relevant to our lives.
First of all, the only people that care about SI units are people that believe they would die without a perfectly base 10 set of units. Unfortunately for them, the SI system will never be perfectly base 10, because it includes time measurements, which will always be based upon cosmological phenomena (at least until such time as Sol 3 ceases to be the center of the universe for most sentient beings, from our perspective, anyway).
The "Imperial" or "US Customary" units, what ever you like to call the traditional measurement system of your choice (personally, I like the Japanese Tatami system), was generally conceived to have measurements that are in some way related to the scale of the human body. The so-called "metric" system is based on a completely arbitrary division (1/10 000 000) of the distance from the equator to the north pole, as measured through Paris, France. This works out to a unit of measurement that is in no way related to human experience. Yes, I know the SI units are now based upon another arbitrary standard, but the point remains.
And in any case, all American Standard units are defined in terms of SI units, and have been for a long time. The United States is officially a metric country, much to the dismay of anyone who actually bothers to think about why a foot is a foot and a pound is a pound without having a kneejerk reaction about the arithmetic.
You are not racing the with the sheriff's horse right now because the international standard is metric units. Is really hard change your daily measurement units. It's HARD. When I moved to US I found no decimal relation between foot, yard, mile, that drove me crazy for a few months. While in metric you have a decimal relation between mm, cm, m, km, etc. in weight, length and volume. Is it easiest ? maybe, but the change would be really hard for all of you. About DPI, points in fonts, etc.. US made the standard because they are pioneers on technology and seems something difficult to change. I really don't imagine a font of 0.07 cm. Some things should change... somethings should not.
I see your logic ... The English system must be based on binary since 12 is a power of 2 :-)
330ml is 12 ounces of soft drink, that's the standard sized can in the US/Canada
pretty funny to me anyway
>Tell me, what's the metric unit for time?
It's the second. If you have ever taken a look at the MKS system (Meters, Killograms, Seconds), it makes physics so much easyer. All units can be expressed in MKS units.
Actually that is not correct for two reasons. First the second is the SI (Systeme Internationale) unit of time but it is not really a metric unit of time. There have been some systems suggested for metric time but given that time has to be tied to astronomical measurements none really work well i.e. there have to be 365/6 "day units" in "year unit".
The second mistake is that not all units can be expressed in terms of metres, kilograms and seconds. Try electric charge for example which is measured in coulombs.
>1 Joule is the amount of energy required to raise 1kg to a height of 1m.
Oops! Looks like you need to review the difference between mass and weight. A joule is the energy required to apply 1 Newton over a distance of 1 meter or to raise 1 kilogram 0.102 meters at a nominal gravitational acceleration of 9.8 m/s.
Actually this is not correct either since you can move a force of 1 newton over a distance of 1 metre without doing any work. The correct statement is 1 joule is the work done when a force of 1 newton moves through a displacement of 1 metre in the direction of the force.
I honestly don't see the problem. If someone wants to use an inferior, of for that sake superior, measuring system - more power to them. It's not like it affects the quality of life.
:-)
;-) (ducks!)
:-)
/4 pints / 8 pints .. then if you order that in half litres when you're in France/ Germany/most of Europe you're in the same sort of territory of being able to walk/needing a taxi/needing a really big greasy take away..
no way, our pints are bigger than your pints? no wonder it's hard to get pished in the USA. Maybe cos your beer's weak as well
hehe I seem to remember the standard bar measurement for a beer in the US is "a beer" or "a bottle" generally
well a pint is sort of half a litre. I think us humans are comfortable with generalisations. I know that's *incredibly* inexact (more like 0.55 litres) but ya know, if your idea of a good night out is 2 pints
I think that's fine, as long as the doctors are precise when measuring out 50ml of some chemical so put in to a sick person or an engineer is using exact mm when building a component etc...
Yeah, a US pint is only 473 millilitres. That's 16 US fluid ounces, and again our fluid ounces (and gills) are slightly different as well.
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I propose we redefine the standard unit of measurement as the distance travelled by light in 1/1 000 000 000 th of an SI second.
That would make the new standard approximately 11.80 US customary inches long.
Maybe then we can all get on with our lives.
Why, oh why can't we become the economic powerhouse of France? Is it because of the lowly inch?
Degrees (and other units of measure based on circumferences instead of radii) have their uses. Most common angles (180 deg, 90 deg, 45 deg, 60 deg, 30 deg) can be expressed without having to rely on fractions or pi.
Even arcminutes have their uses. An arcminute of latitude is almost exactly 1 nautical mile (~6,000 feet or 1/3 of a league). I certainly wouldn't want to try navigating using radians instead of the conventional degrees.
"Likewise, if I need to estimate the length of the room and I don't have a measuring device, do you know how I do it? I walk, one foot in front of the other, and see how many steps it takes. My feet are each just about 1 foot long, and it works pretty reliably."
Likewise, if I need to estimate the length of the room and I don't have a measuring device, do you know how I do it? I walk, one foot in front of the other, and see how many steps it takes. My feet are each just about a third of a meter long, and it works pretty reliably.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Start with schools. Provide more time using the metric system than the English system from prekindergarten on up.
Encourage children to measure themselves in cm or even mm instead of or in addition to inches. Encourage them to weigh themselves using kg. Yeah I know kg isn't a unit of weight but at any given spot on earth it's proportional to Newtons.
Change things kids buy like soft drinks. Sell 1/3-liter drinks instead of 12 ounce bottles. Yeah 1/3 isn't very "metric"-y but kids will go for it.
Change the chip and candy bar labels to show grams more prominently than ounces.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
After reading many of the comments now my 50ct. I use all metrics (I'm in Germany). In some cases I prefer the Imperial System, displays for example. I'd always prefer a 24" screen over anything sold in centimeters. And I couldn't possibly tell how large a 24" screen is in cms. I have a fairly good idea how much 24" for a screen are though. So I guess it's always dependent on what you're used to. And don't tell me the Celsius thing is not useful. It's fairly convenient when telling how cold it is outside. You'd be warned if it is under 0 degrees, it's freezing. Otherwise I really don't care what you Americans are using. Blow up your rockets and whatever else as long as you don't hit me.
it's simple - just start using the metric system. Most programs and applications can be changed to use metric units, and convertors are everywhere. Metric is in common usage by anyone that's doing anything important, or anyone that has to deal with other countries in science and trade. So.. just do it. Screw your government and the luddites. It is you that run your country.
Or.. you could move to canada.. nothing like 355ml of good beer (i'm not even going to tell you what that is in ounces... because i don't know).
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
"The second mistake is that not all units can be expressed in terms of metres, kilograms and seconds. Try electric charge for example which is measured in coulombs."
Actually, the base measure is amperes. A coulomb is 1 ampere * second.
In all there are 7 base units, but I cannot recall them offhand.
And what if your measurement is not exactly one second?
Binary on Fingers doesn't work that good...
A so called two by four, is more like 1.5 by 3.5 inches.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The problem with the metric system is that it is based on 10, but should be based on a more divisable base such as 12. 12 is divisable by 2, 3, 4, and 6. 60 is another good alternative because it is divisable by 2,3,4,5 and 6. This makes dealing with fractions much easier. 30 is yet another good choice for a base, although it has a problem with 4.
Table-ized A.I.
Actually you can use your fingers to count to 12 without re-engineering the human race. Just point your thumb to one of your finger segments, you have 3 on each of your 4 fingers, making 12 finger segments on each hand (useful for counting up to 144). This was actually used in some ancient civilisations, and may be another reason why the number 12 is so important to our counting systems.
"I get four rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!"
This space for rent.
it has nothing to do with science, it is just a cultural matter (or problem) whenever usa folk's realise that they're just equal as every one else and not superior and that world is shrinking (virtually) they may solve that and a lot of other "issues" they have.
by force.
Over the past century the US has developed into a country that sees itself as the ultimate in all aspects of living, "There's no way like the American way", and no attempts at convincing through reasoning, no matter how valid, are going to change that.
It is not in the overall culture of America to look at the world, notice that 99% of everyone else is using a common measuring system and think "Gee, maybe we should used the same system as well for efficiency, consistency and economic reasons". It is hubris on a grand scale and the only real discussion anyone should be having is: How is this going to affect America's competitiveness in the future? Will American graduates be disadvantaged in the non-scientific global economy?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
No. A radian is a measurement of angle. There are 2Pi radians in a circle, just as there are 360 degrees in a circle. It makes no difference whether or not you have constant radii. In fact it makes things easier, because you can calculate arcs just my multiplying the angle in radians by the radius (if that is required).
You do not need to start adding points to take into account varying distance or anything like that, you just work in radians rather than degrees.
Claus
Like I wrote previously... the OP is neither trolling nor is he joking. He's interested in opinions and ideas rather than flaming. Everyone else here is blowing it out of proportion. Here's how it goes: Some people like the idea and some don't. Then, the arguments ensue, just like on any other internet forum. I admit that I never really considered a total metric conversion for the USA, and I use metrics every day at work. I didn't realize that a simple idea such as metrics could be so polarizing.
How are 0 and 100 defined by entirely arbitrary values better than 0 and 100 defined by freezing and boiling? If you had any experience with Celsius, you'd know it happens to be exactly the scale needed for day to day use:
above 40 - about as hot as it can be
30 to 40 - wear shorts
20 to 30 - nice temperature
10 to 20 - you need a jacket
0 to 10 - you need a sweater under the jacket
below 0 - doh, it's freezing (literally)
with some variations, of course, allowing for the different tolerance people have for temperature. But the numbers happen to fit quite nicely the words one has for temperature, 0 = freezing, 10 = cold, 20 = nice, 30 = warm, 40 = hot.
maybe the US schools can teach the metric system right after evolution class, and showing the Gore climate change documentary.
-- bartman
This is a social problem. If you don't like what society is doing, then set a better example.
I absolutely despise the idea of using force. That doesn't solve problems, it creates them.
I've always found the imperial system to be its own reward/punishment anyway. Every time I screw up a recipe because I can't remember whether a cup is 8 or 16 ounces, that's just another incentive to modernize.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hex is the one true base.
I don't care what base you want.
All your base are belong to us.
America would feel less american with the metric system. It would be yet one more of these countries that uses boring little metric system where everything multiplies by multiples of ten. Booooooring!
You just got troll'd!
I am usually just a lurker on here, but I finally signed up to post because this made me think of a humorous song by a "band" (a guy actually) Atom and his package. Song is called. "(Lord, It's Hard To Be Happy When You're Not) Using The Metric System"
Lyrics as according to one of the many lyrics sites (don't feel like validating them)
12 inches per foot two pints per quart why don't we make it easy? The English system of measurement must relate to history. We can use units of 10 and convert with ease like all the other countries. I am in command yes I am taking a stand from this disease we must be free. good god! You're drunk with your tradition that has no validity well I'm intoxicated with sports in metrics come drink a deciliter with me we want metrics we want it now we know we can win I weigh 170 pounds that's 90 kilograms see metrics can even make you thin all cool things are in metrics for example here's just one I've got my 9 well that's 9 millimeters, sounds cooler than my point two seventy inches gun. The president will not exist and they will call me communist and call me scum but its worth it Canadians will think we are smart or at least they will think we are not as dumb. your tradition that has no validity well I'm intoxicated with sports in metrics come drink a deciliter with me we want metrics we want it now we know we can win I weigh 170 pounds that's 90 kilograms see metrics can even make you thin the revolution is here we must overcome at last as we symbolically stick their fucking foot up their fucking ass guitar! Your tradition that has no validity well I'm intoxicated with sports in metrics come drink a deciliter with me we want metrics we want it now we know we can win I weigh 170 pounds that's 90 kilograms see metrics can even make me thin
That should give you nerds a laugh. This song is about 10 years old too.
Perhaps because U.S. standard units make no sense what so ever, perhaps, also, because the rest of the world (okay, sans some backwards developing nations) use them, and we live in a time of globalization meaning increased exposure to units written to par with the rest of the world (sans some third world nations). Anyone with ANY exposure to the rest of the world quickly gets sick of having to rip out a unit converter, or quickly do ballpark estimates in their head, same goes with reading ANY technical literature. This latter in part bars the average American from being able to understand anything mildly technical.
May I repeat that U.S. units make no sense? I still (growing up in the US) don't know all of the handy conversions for the units I use daily, while with metric, this would NOT be a problem to anyone what-so-ever (unless dealing with certain third world nations).
I think the only reason the U.S. supports it's units is out of shear egotism, the only reason we do it is to be different.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
You overclockers, always bragging.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I don't know if he's joking or not yet, I'm still drawing that sine wave . . .
Godless heathen.
two arms is base 4. one arm would be binary.
"...had to sell things in kilos and grams instead of pounds and ounces."
I think that would be a problem too. Kilograms is a unit of mass not weight. Granted, it is inferred kilograms-force but still a bastardized use of a fundamental SI unit, IMHO.
We actually still use pund (pound) in Denmark, it is just redefined as 500 g.
Not quite as drastic as the Swedes, who redefined their miles to be 10 km!
When you live in the more nothern parts of the world (or southern) it is cold in your winter. It seems now that we spend 4 to 5 months in the NEGATIVE degrees range even though it is warmer then in the 60's, as we all know too well. Mentally you spend all winter in the negative. In the 60's and 70's (or even today) you might spend 2 weeks in January and maybe February in this negative mentally with Fahrenheit. As a humanoid carbon unit, somehow 20 degrees Farenheit seems not as negative as -6.66666667 degrees Celsius. There is supposed to be this mental thing, in the real north, about living in the dark for almost 6 months. The same can be said about negative temperatures. I can just image more north than me. Brrr! 46.04380, -73.11511 You adjust to Celcius of course because your body can relate to outside but... On the positive side, when you drive 60mph you are now doing about 100. YES!
note that if you get rid of the Imperial Inch, say goodbye to "point" font-sizes; no more will you be able to specify a simple 12pt (ie, 12/72 of an inch), but rather 4.233mm!
Uh, so the "point" becomes the "unit" of font size, and the fact that it's a messy number of mm is irrelevant - just like in Physics when you use c rather than 299 792 458 m/s. The fact that it was originally defined in relation to the inch is irrelevant.
(Yes, yes, I know - IHBT, IHL, I will HAND)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
At least within US West coast physics departments, we usually refer to them as Imperial units and SI/MKS/CGS units in the classroom.
In the lab we call them English or metric. (As in the phrase, "Damn it, we forgot that the new pump flange doesn't use metric screws. Who wants to head back down the mountain to find an English hex driver set?")
I think you might have missed that GP wasn't that funny because of what P said...
All you have to do first, is get Americans to drive electric cars, install low-flow showerheads, change the CBS logo, and stop going to Wal-mart. After that, it's a snap!
I dunno if you've noticed this, but Americans hate change.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
"...despite mars probes crashing because obviously people DO forget to do it sometimes"
You might want to look into that a little more.
It took 20 years for your country to switch. Clearly there are some bumps along the way.
Yes the US should be more metric for compatibility, but the metric is niether better or worse then Imperial, just different.
It is what you are used to. Except with beer, which goes flat faster unless it is poured in pints.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As our life basically revolves around hockey (evidenced today by the country watching 3 straight all-Canadian hockey games), Celcius is by far the superior measurement.
If the temperature is in the plus range, your hockey rink will be slushy and no good for skating on. If it's in the minus, game on!
What's funny is I'm only half kidding. We used to think this way as kids, when determining what to do on the weekend in March.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
except they aren't completly metric now, are they?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't know if this is true, but an architect friend of mine said that for work he prefers imperial to metric... and he was raised in Korea using the metric system. His explanation was that in architecture, you often divide things up by fractions as you work, and it is easier to do the fraction math in your head than dealing with long decimals. I have no idea if this is true since I can't do math in my head at all these days...
Now of course, you could certainly do metric in fractions, saying "1/32 cm" instead of ".3125 mm", but that's not really the metric system in the larger sense then, is it? I don't know if this really matters or not, but I found it interesting that a person raised with the metric system could prefer imperial at all.
Cheers.
Yep. Sexagismal digits rock. That's why we still use them to measure time.
"UTC is an atomic timescale, measured in atomic (SI) seconds..."
And yet our culture amazingly cannot shake the use of GMT which has its second defined astronomically and is now an obsolete time scale. I guess we can thank, in part, the BBC who just can't give it up.
I'm holding a NBS Special Publication #236, NBS Frequency and Time Broadcast Services, Radio Stations WWV, WWWVH, WWWVB, WWVL dated March, 1972. It address the conversion to broadcasting time services in UTC 35 years ago!
The US should gradually adapt to metric: first the combined units like heat & power. Kick out BTU/h for Watts. Display Energy Efficient Ratio's in W/W. Go for Joules, too.
Keep the mile/pound/inch to the last moment. The UK did this too.
However I have been using metric system all my life and it is intuitive for me.....There is nothing special about imperial or metric system for daily use. You just have to be accustomed to it.
I agree, there is nothing wrong with either. Because you were raised from birth using SI metric, you are conversant with it. Because I was raised from birth using the english foot-pound system, I am conversant with that. I also know SI from school and the military.
SI Metric is like the English language. It is standard in international science and business. When doing scientific work or international business, use English language and SI Metric. But that doesn't mean that Italians need to use English Language at the local green grocer in Italy or that I have to use SI at home in America.
There is nothing wrong with America having its own culture and using the foot-pound systems, as long as people are taught the standard for science.
you must be new here.
The logic is you can get stupid with conversion precision and convince most people that changing is too complicated to bother with, when for 99.5% of the time conversion is trivial. Somebody askes how far is it and you know its about a mile and they're metric you'd say about a klick and a half, not 1.62 kilometers.
For what people do everyday 500 gm is the same as a pound of hamburger, a coffee scoop is 30 mL is an ounce, a TBSP is 15 mL a TSP is 5 and your not going to get pulled over for going 110KM/Hr in a 65 MPH zone.
How many people know how many minums is in a quart or how long a span is if we taught the Avoirdupois system that way people would be begging to go metric
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The US actually adopted the metric system by an act of Congress in 1866, which included the text:
"It shall be lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system; and no contract or dealing, or pleading in any court, shall be deemed invalid or liable to objection because the weights or measures expressed or referred to therein are weights or measures of the metric system."
What Congress did not do, was penalize or discourage other systems of measurement. Consequently, there was little incentive for metric units to be adopted outside science and engineering, so traditional quirky units persisted in common use, despite their problems (the standard yard was shrinking, for instance). However, even these were redefined by the Bureau of Weights and Measurements in 1893 to be based on the metric units, so that 1 inch is exactly 0.0254 meters, for instance.
Perhaps as a result of the lack of use of the metric system in the US in the century since it was officially adopted, Congress passed another act in 1988, which mandates "the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce." All government business is supposed to be in metric units...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The metric system is unarguably superior for science, but it's not for every day use. Normal people don't deal with inter unit conversions, or usually even in unit conversions. It's not important to be able to figure out the number of calories in a given volume of water, it's just important to have a feeling for how much a given volume of water is.
All the real arguments for metric being better fall on deaf ears for the normal populace because they just don't do that kind of thing.
We should have make it a big patriotic thing back in 1976...
There would have been cool posters "We though out the King 200 years ago, It time to though out his feet and inches"
There could have been big ruler burning rallies. All the and all stuff for the bicentenary could have been metric boosting the metric economy.
O'well
Maybe in 2076
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So around 9 billion, right?
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
At first sight it seems odd but it is very useful. For example say my car gets 9 litres/100 km, then I plan to take my car on a 600 km trip ... how much fuel do I need ... why 9 x 6 = 54 litres ! If on the other hand I wanted to do it the old way so I have 11 km / litre then if I am going 600 km I will need .... 600 / 11 = 54 litres. I have replaced a division, a harder task, for a simple multiplication.
Bitter and proud of it.
So, since we've established they're both arbitrary, and putting aside your apparent aversion to the French (not that I blame you there), I think metric is considered "thee" system for three principal reasons: 1. everybody (but the US, and possibly an African country or two) uses it, 2. it is generally accepted by scientists (even in the us) as being the preferred units and 3. it just seems easier to do base-10 math for most people.
You know, when I was growing up, that was considered a very stupid reason for doing something.
Clear, Dark Skies
OK, for those of you who think that there would be no shell shock from a switchover to metric, please go back to bed. Here's your binky and your teddy bear. The adults want to talk.
Firstly, the metric system is known, if not actively used, by just about everyone born during or after Vietnam as a matter of school curriculum.
Secondly, the metric system is actually used by some industries, just not many. Sure you put gas into your car by the gallon, but you buy your soda by the two liter. And if you buy most any food product in the US, you'll note that you have your choice. Ounces and grams, or fluid ounces and milliliters.
But consider this, how long, and at what price, does it take to retool a car plant to use metric dimensions when everything from the blueprint to the last nut and bolt specifies US measure? Or any sort of manufaturing for that matter? And what benefit is it to them? As long as the bolts are the right size for the nuts, and all the welds are in the right places, and all the little bits fit together, then does your average US consumer care what measurement system you used? For that matter, does the US car enthusiast/tuner want to trade in his set of US tools for metric, now that they've been obsolete.
Another thing, do you know what kind of a mess you'd have on your hands if you all of a sudden changed all the speed limit signs to KPH from MPH? I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but the scalar KPH is quite a bit higher than MPH. It'd be fun for a while, watching people rocket down the highway at a good 120... MPH because they got the graduations confused.
And everyone in this country knows exactly what to wear when it's a springy 70F outside. What's that, like 20C?
The fact of the matter is, the only people who really want America to use the metric system are those whose jobs are made easier because of it, or those who already have adopted it (in other words, read you change and make all the effort). Everyone else would be forced to change for reasons they don't get or care about. It isn't that Americans don't like to change, but when they have no problem with what is, their attitude, quite reasonably, is to ask "what the fuck for?"
What other good reason exists for the average person, other than the aforementioned "everyone else is doing it", to go along with it? I believe that there is an American aphorism that goes: "If everyone jumped of a bridge, would you?"
Yo measuring system is so primitive, it doesn't even take the freezing and boiling points of water into consideration!
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
We're having more problems because of it than Europe is. I don't think Europeans really give a shit what units we use. It's not a big deal for them to have to calculate the units in metric when they read something in the news that's in imperial units. Whereas we've had costly engineering disasters because of it. Besides, metric is a lot more consistant and makes more sense. Ever try doing physics in imperial units? Most of slashdot's trolls are rooted in a misunderstanding of what the article says...
Multiply the US by 2.54.
*ahem*
;-)
:-))
You know those imperial units you love to use? Their official definition is actually in metric. America has been on-board with metric for a long time, and you are allowed to use it in trade & commerce (and is often used -- buy a 2 liter bottl of pop recently?). American Imperial is just a special case of metric.
(sadly, this post will get ignored because it's Saturday and at the end of a 900+ message thread
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
If you're a scientist in the US and are having unit trouble with scientists in other countries, you must be using kitchen measuring cups. Even if you are using kitchen measuring cups, you must not have a very good calculator.
I know, someone is going to mention Mars Climate Orbiter now. Actually it's probably already mentioned 50 times below but I'm too lazy to count.
Well, as a maths student, I would prefer to ban degrees and keep radians. Radians are actually useful to work with.
Yeah, well, as a former Field Artillery Fire Support Specialist, I would prefer to ban both degrees and radians. Mils are a lot easier to work with when blowing stuff up.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
You won't find anyone in the UK who doesn't know what a mile is. Or a pint. Especially a pint.
US wasn't metric because the building materials they dealt with were too big for cm but too small for m.
Today building materials measured in inches and feet are no longer affordable in dollars. They're going to start buying smaller building materials and that's going to be the turning point for metric.
Actually, metrification wasn't a failure of the Carter administration as much as its failure was complete during the Carter administration. But it wasn't a failure. Metric units are ubiquitous in America. Soda comes measured in liters. Everyone has seen "16.9 ounce" bottles of soda. People have 4, 5, and 6mm Allen wrenches right next to their 1/4" drill bits. It's not confusing in the least.
Soda also comes measured in ounces. What caused the end of metrification was the metrification that had already been implemented by the mid 1970s. It proved that the metric system could coexist with English units. Consumers don't care whether they are buying pints or half liters. They don't care that they take 500mg capsules of Tylenol. They don't care that bullets are measured in grains (which is not exclusive to the US). They don't care that they are buying 750mL "fifths" or that beer is measured in cL in Germany.
It's a non-issue, unless you insist on being a pedantic twit who wants road signs marked in kilometers and gasoline measured in liters. Well, that's part of the cultural heritage you experience when living in or visiting our fine little country.
Why, after all, does Canada insist on using "metric dollars"?
To hear some people talk, you'd think that removing English units from America is next in line after abolishing slavery.
So the arguments are: imperial is easier to use (which anyone born in a metric country knows is just a matter of what you're used to) and imperial is our American heritage and no goddamn-pinko-lefty-hippy-mathematician will take it from me unless they pry it from my cold dead hands! Lets just think about this for a second... imperial measurements... empire... England.... This isn't pride in independence, it's pride in being stubborn.
During the French Revolution, which has known some excess, to say the least, there was an attempt to divide the time differently : 10 hours in the day, 100 minutes in one hour, 100 seconds in a minute, 10 days in a week, but still 12 months in the year :
http://www.gefrance.com/calrep/calen.htm/ /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
http:
Slow News Week :(
Here here, I believe we should mod this up! I mean, come on, get off the stupid dime, what system you measure in is meaningless, the measurement is the thing and of course, people being smart enough to know to convert... BTW, ever been to the fucking UK? You buy a Pint of beer, but a liter of gas, your roads are marked in MPH, as are your speedometers... Hell it is competely bastardized, you want to complain about something, complain about their non-self-consistent measurements. I could give a rats ass what the system is, learn it, learn the conversions, and then you can go anywhere and be understood. Now I will go take my medicine and calm down... Heading out for a pint, anyone coming?
My not responding to your flame is in no way indicative of my submission to your statement, it just means I don't have t
Water freezes at 0c Water boils at 100c There are 10mm to a cm 100cm to a m 1000m to a km etc. What's taking so long, America?
maybe you have a chance getting them to learn to spell correctly, or realise that football is played with a round ball.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
They have been driving standards and technology for years now. It would be an easy sellas well: "Now 254% more satisfying!".
HTH
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Which feet and inches system? Most every country in Western Europe has had their own feet & inches systems in the past, and some still do. Those feet & inches are not harmonised between the countries, so a UK feet is not the same as a Swedish feet and so on. When I lived in the US, the feet & inches system used there was called "standard" or "real" units. As if the SI units are unreal, or even surreal. Can't we all agree to measure everything in "ticks"?
I say good sir, we should break our eggs on the big end. And I say we should break them on the little end.
I think we've all had this argument before. It's stupid and pointless, and the english measurement system is quite entrenched in our culture. I don't know how far 10 km is without converting it to miles, likewise, someone who's used the metric system all their life won't know how far 10 miles is without converting it to kilometers. It's silly to argue what is better for measurement. It's just arbitrary numbers.
For science the metric makes more sense. The conversions are much simpler. Powers of 10 are easy. Even for cooking metrics would be nice, but I haven't grown up knowing what an ounce really is in the same way I know what a mile is. However trying to make people convert just doesn't make much sense. It's expensive to change all the signs, and more expensive to try and change peoples minds. Plus we'd end up with the situation where all these products in the US that are standard sizes would no longer be reasonable. Who wants to buy 3.785 liters of milk? Thinks like this don't change overnight, and it's messy.
Besides, I think the europeans need us to stick to the english measurement system so they still have something that they can point to and say "see us europeans are so much better than you americans..."
Phil
Admittedly I do not have the latest and greatest version of Photoshop at hands. I use v6 at a friends place from time to time. We're printing a lot. At home I use the Gimp.
What really annoys me about both of them is that use can have them use cm instead of inches - they'll act like they're actually measuring in cm then. But they DON'T do it for real!
Both programs keep and insist on THINKING in inch and roughly spit out measurements in cm - really obscure and long numbers with lots of zeroes behind the dot.
Say: You want to print something on a sheet of paper and you want the printed image to have the exact(!) size of 20 cm. You enter that in PS or Gimp, I dare you! It'll accept your input and then change it to something like 19.8434".
I don't want these programs to PRETEND they can handle cm, I want them to actually handle cm! I mean - how hard can it be? Why do they insist on thinking in inch and run your numbers through some kind of measurement converter? It's annoying as hell. You call THAT professional, Adobe?! Hear me laugh!
Then again I was really confused that Gimp is doing it the same way. What were they thinking?
Leopard cub
Circumcision is child abuse.
I don't particularly like the Imperial measuring system either, but at least it's not based entirely on arbitrary bullshit.
Meter: The other suggested defining the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth's meridian along a quadrant, that is the distance from the equator to the north pole.
Kilogram: The kilogram was originally defined as one thousand times "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of a meter, and at the temperature of melting ice"
You have to pick one standard unit of bullshit for every fundamental measurement, length, mass, time, etc. All other units can then be derived from these fundamental units. So of course length and mass are all "made-up" for any measurement system. But I don't think it's a good idea to make up multiple units for each type like imperial!
Besides, you can reason the original idea of the 'meter' is somewhat rational and neutral (at least for earthlings).
But using the diameter of the kings left nutt as an inch can hardly be called sane.
...as far as I know. But you are the math student.
I took a trip up to canada a while back (where everything was in metric, obviously) but i went into a subway and they still had 6" and foot long sandwiches. i asked the kid who worked there "so if you guys use the metric system, how do you know how long a 6 inch sub is?" he didnt seem too amused. i wonder if subway uses inches all around the world. and if theyve ever considered calling them 15.24 cm sandwiches in some countries....
Did anybody even notice when 2 liters replaced the quart bottle? If we went to bed tonight and got up in the morning and the US was on metric people would bitch the first day, barely notice the second and not care by the third. Does anybody really care how many liters it takes to fill your car? The only people who would pitch a fit would be the people who make measuring devices. Give them some kind of tax break and just change. By this time next month nobody would remember what a gallon was. Oh and then maybe we could LAND on Mars instead of crashing into it.
I think this is a place where change of measurement system would be a lot more useful to the average person than trying to force SI use where it's wanted, frankly. A size 2 is not twice as large as a size 1, and a size 10 is not five times that of a size 2, whether we're talking dresses or shoes, and they're not based on any acknowledged standard, so a size 2 with one manufacturer may be the same as a 2.5 with another, or a 1.5 in a third -- for dress sizes, the more it costs, the smaller it's size number will be.
Get international clothing makers to establish a system of sizing that is internationally consistant and coherent, and you will have done as much good in the world as you would by forcing my aunt (or daughter) to figure out her weight in kgs.
Rather than play catchup with the world, let's do it right and switch to base 12 counting. now suddenly the english system of measurements makes sense! I mean, base ten lets you take 5ths or halfs of something easily. not very useful. with base 12, you can easily take halfs, thirds, quarters, eigths, and sixths of things. how nice is that? very. support base 12 now.
http://notanumber.net/
It's as easy to say 1 pi, half a pi, a quarter of pi, one third of pi and one sixth of pi. as long as both you and the person you're communicating with knows how big the angle is. you're just not used to hearing it and that's why it's hard. it's not like saying sure you could say O point three three pi but that would just be weird.
I thought a "klick" was a unit of distance, as in "5 klicks southwest."
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
The biggest problem with the imperial system is that it doesn't have just one base. It's base 3 or 12 or 16 or 128 or 1760 or 2000 or a whole bunch of other things.
Metric is base 10, which happens to be the same base we count with. It also has convenient units for all scales, which is why it gets used in science.
The Imperial System draws it's name from the British Empire which once utilised it. The US was once part of said empire, although the Empire has abandoned it's measurement system, now.
Seriously. I am an engineer and I use what I like to call normal units all the time. Good old feet, slugs, and seconds are perfectly fine for use in science and engineering. In exactly what way is metric better? So what if every body else uses it, like my mom told me way back " If every one jumped of a cliff would you?"
Once in a while, somebody gets killed when trying to inflate a tire using the wrong units.
w as_then/life_society/gimli_glider
There is also the "Gimli Glider", an which ran out of fuel because of the fuel was calculated in pounds instead of liters.
See http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-69-240-1155-20/that_
Just because the country as a whole has not converted doesn't mean the submitter as an individual can't. I personally consider Monday the first day of the week (for a variety of reasons). But I can't get a normal calendar with this setup in the U.S. it seems. Apparently there are a lot of other countries where Monday is the beginning of the week. But I don't let an obviously religious-influenced standard stop me personally. I can set my Yahoo Calendar to Monday as first of week, and I think I may skip a regular wall calendar.
I think that is the one that would bother me the most!! I know how to dress if it is 32F, or 40F, or 99F.
I'd be lost with whatever the equivalents in C are...(yes, I'm too lazy to look up a converter). But really...most people in the US seldom have a need for accuracy needed in science. For daily life...the mile, mph, mpg...temperature in F is all way too ingrained into the culture and just isn't going to change anytime soon. Most people in the US have very little if any contact with any else in the world besides possibly a chat room on the internet....so, no one here generally sees any reason to change to 'go along' with the rest of the world. They don't see or touch the rest of the world, so, it pretty much doesn't exist to them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You just illustrated there why the common person in the US will not want to change. Now...they can do those measurments automatically without thought.
But, right there...the avg person would have to stop what they're doing to figure out what that "Quarter Pounder" hamburger weighs (damn, there goes a trademark), how much coffee to scoop...how much cayenne pepper that recipe calls for TBSP = ?, and that last one...having to compute the speed in real time in traffic AT speed (I don't imagine all the old cars with speedo's will come off the road for decades).
It is just too ingrained into the lifestyle and culture at this point in the US, and most citizens don't/won't see a benefit of changing in their everyday life, but, would see a major hassle....hence, no major reason for John Q. USCitizen seeing any reason to change. He doesn't interact with Europeans in the world....he only intereacts with US citizens in his city that use the same units he does and have done 'forever' so far...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
my perspective (as an australian)
1. It isn't that hard
many people trot out reasons why it is so hard (changing tooling, hardware shops, celsius too coarse grained, all road signs have to change etc)
Australia did it in seventies. Lot's of people complained. Once a generation of school kids came through it was no longer a problem.
Estimate distances... a stride approx=metre (same accuracy as pacing out feet).
Temperature - can't say I can tell difference between 22.5C and 23C. (Perhaps US folk are more sensitive to temperatures but from somewhere where all temps quoted in C can't say I've ever noticed it being a problem)
Litre - when liquid food containers and fuel pumps are litre/ml multiples, you encounter it so often you forget the old units
Change size of things at the hardware - you can still buy imperial screws and metric screws but most people will think in metric. Often you buy things that are 25.4mm (=1inch) to fit old stuff. You get used to it pretty quick. After a while imperial stuff just becomes a nuisance and you think in all metric
Road signs - As I remember it (as a kid) Australia for 5 years replaced the miles/mph signs with ones of different colour/shape with 'km' ones (clearly marked as km) and people got quickly used to it. Then removed old ones Within a few years people just forgot about mph
2. Does it matter?
if you deal with the rest of the world it makes life easier for both them and you. If you don't - who cares.
If you change older people will still think imperial younger people won't. Life and society though doesn't break down and probably over 10 year period the benefits (ease of international trade etc) will outweigh the costs (OK that number pulled out of my hat but reckon it is arguable)
(by way I grew up through the change over process and in the end was a bit of an anti climax. Reckon hardest job is getting people onside. If you do it will go well. If you don't you'll have clumsy situation like in UK where they have only done it half hearted and result is a bit of a shemozzle)
"damn, it's colder than a witches titty out here"
I recall reading in 1976 an article about the bicentenial. The article mentioned that every year since the first congress in 1789 that congress had passed a motion resolving that this is the year that the USA would convert to metric. Assuming that they haven't missed any year since, we must have 218 consecutive metric conversion resolutions. If metric conversion is not the oldest debate in the country, it must be close.
The stupidity of resistance is not just embedded in our laws. How many places in the statues of the federal government and the states must we have feet, pounds, and miles per hour embedded in the law. It would take another 218 years to get them all revised.
I remember the history of one such law. In 1979, during the oil crisis, the price of gasoline threatened to go over one dollar per gallon for the first time. That caused a crisis in gas stations because all the gas pumps had only two digits for the price per gallon. An obvious solution would be to start selling gas by the liter, but the Democrats in New York State declared that to be a fraud on the consumer and passed a law forbidding gas to be sold by any unit other than gallons.
Software Tech: Oh, damn, i knew we shouldn't have rounded the nearest milli-radian to 6400
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
True. But degrees and radians are really different things, with the slight inconvenience that they are easily interchangable. A degree is a unit of real world measurement. It's designed for putting markings on a protractor and making sure there's a convenient number for dividing a circle. A radian is more of a mathematical concept used for angles, phase difference, and a number of other areas of mathematics.
why people think the US highway system should be converted to metric. Miles are longer than kilometers. Our roads are longer and need the larger measurement. People argue about needing metric because we export products. WE DON'T EXPORT ROADS!
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
"Perhaps because U.S. standard units make no sense what so ever"
Actually they do. They're simply fractional instead of decimal. What's so hard about that?
Where the hell did you think we got 5280 feet as a mile? On the face of it, it looks like an entirely random number. It's not random. It's 80 chains. 1 Surveyor's chain = 4 rods. 1 rod = 16.5 feet.
" I still (growing up in the US) don't know all of the handy conversions for the units "
An inch is 25.4 mm. Exactly. Since a CC of water = 1 gram, you can do all sorts of things. If you have a chart of Specific Gravity for materials, you can do even more. 1 ounce = appx 28 grams.
"I think the only reason the U.S. supports it's units is out of shear egotism, the only reason we do it is to be different."
No, it's because there are a lot of us that need to do this every day and it's more of a pain to abandon english units than to keep them.
One day you will need to buy land, and looking at the deed, you will thank me for explaining to you exactly what a chain is.
--
BMO
But the inch is now defined as exactly 2.54 centimeters. Ergo, the yard is defined in meters (36 in * 0.0254 m/in = 0.9144 m).
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
Parochial Idiot. American?
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
No, 2 arms is base 2 and 16 fingers is base 16 because when you are counting, you are using your fingers as a counter position not as a digit. Sure, while if someone asks how far you can count with your fingers you can tell them 1023, most people will assume it to be 10. This is ironic since you don't use your digits to do digits.
Personally I find the thumbs to be annoying while counting so I never count higher than 255 which is useful because you can do a direct to hexadecimal conversion with the fingers of each hand (but using all of my normal parts I can get up to 2097151--more if I want to use the positions of my limbs as well).
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
I, for one, welcome our new European standardization overlords.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
They also 'pressed the reset button' on the calendar. I have some French coins from the period of the First Republic with years 2, 3 etc. on them. They really, really thought they'd reinvented everything new, and were starting everything over but 'doing it right this time.'
Which is part of what makes an arrogant designed-by-comittee thing like the Metric System irksome to some of us, at it's core, and without having to consider any other arguements.
"Well, as a maths student, I would prefer to ban degrees and keep radians. Radians are actually useful to work with."
As a maths student, you of all people should understand that measuring angles with radians is irrational.
Allways has been, it seems the english where a bit upset over a little war or something and said FU when you guys aksed to borrow a copy of the english standerd messurments.
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Yeah, but this actually makes good sense.
Because the second was defined before the atomic clock. And now that we have a more precise measure of time we upgrade the definition of a second without changing it.
Can't we all agree to measure everything in "ticks"?
I think we should measure everything in "dicks", since there's been a lot of them waving around in this thread (and around the world, for that matter) and compatibility won't matter since they're all different lengths anyway.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yeh, coming from Aus and in science, I don't get how people can work without the metric system. It removes most of the conversion constants in equations.
:). Not E(joules)=m(pounds)*c(feet/second^2)*0.3048*0.4535 or whatever unit America uses for energy. I suppose in a way they can claim superior intellect. Seeing all you need to do to prove E=mc^2 incorrect or incomplete is be American :).
You know if you just chuck together things of one SI quantity you get another one out of the equation. Like if you are ending up with energy (joules) just make sure you put things in the equation in Newtons and Seconds and Metres and Kilograms and whatever. And no constants. E will actually equal mc^2
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Everything you mention about Canada is the same in Australia.
;).
Everything is metric except Imperial Units are popular for the weight of new born babies and height.
Even though kids are getting taught metric at school here, parents are still talking about their height in Imperial Units (but never weight it seems). I asked a couple of 13 year olds a few months back how many centimetres they were (as a bit of a test). They had no idea.
I know myself my cm height for passports and licenses etc. However, every adult I speak to about my height knows what 6' 3" is
I am a bit of a Gridiron fan (excuse the Australianism - we have too many football codes to call it all "football") and so it is interesting to talk yards about the statistics. Rugby League (big in my state of Queensland) used to measure things in yards, but haven't for a loooooonnngggg time.
"The future comes 60 minutes an hour no matter who you are or what you do." The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
Economically speaking, all the US is about the same as all of europe. I know the EU likes to think of themselves as lots of countries all on equal footing with the US. But the reality is that an EU 'nation' is economically, and militarily equal comparable to an individual US state. So you if count the EU as one vote, and the US as one vote and consider that between them they make up the entire industrialized world; there isn't much more reason for the US to bear the expense of moving to the European system then there for the EU to bear the cost to move to the US system.
Derivation is irrelevent. Ease of use of the system for everyday use is the key for public adoption.
I don't care what system is used by scientists for their work. No one expects everyone to convert to base 16 counting because computer scientists find that a lot better to use for their work, so why would I care what scientists use for their job? Specialists will use specialized language and units for their job, it doesn't make those units appropriate for everyone.
Some of the metric units are fairly sane for everyday use, others are pretty impractical.
You complain about having multiple units for what one is trying to measure, it is precisely that lack that makes the metric system less convenient for my everyday use. I use teaspoons and tablespoons at the same time in cooking, then turn around and talk about cups. The dirty secret of the metric system is they do it too, they just try to pretend they are the same unit (kilometer vs meter vs centimeter). But divisions of ten aren't always good for normal use. It's good to have two units that differ by other factors, factors that came about because they were practical rather than because someone thought everything should be base ten. As people who are supposedly literate in computers, I would think that the slashdot community would be less addicted to counting on ten fingers.
Besides, "Just 5ml of sugar helps the medicine go down" doesn't have the same ring.
I would argue that metric has failed in the US because it just isn't any easier to use for the common person than the US system. What's particularly funny to me is the people who like to bring up units that just aren't used in common US usage as "examples" of the hideousness of the measurements used in the US. Yes, there are some metric units that by happenstance are easy enough to use to standard US units as to be convenient, but the meter/yard and quart/liter approximations are more accidents than the standard in my everyday life. I for one would rather think in the units that makes the numbers easier for me to use than try to use one unit that may or may not have easy to use numbers.
I also find that people tend to work better in fractions than in decimals, yet the metric system seems to have tried to exclude fractions. It suggests (though it doesn't have to be) imprecision, but it works great for everyday work.
My least favorite metric unit of all has to be Celsius. Even my science teachers (more than one) admitted that Celsius as a scale was not well thought out. Farenheit, despite the crazy arbitrariness, ended up being near perfect for talking about the weather. 100 is too hot to go out, 0 is too cold to go out.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
I appreciate that Americans simply disregard all efforts to force a standard on them. No protests, no complaining, they simply ignore whatever laws the government tries to force on them that they don't like. This Freedom is part of what makes America different. We do not do what we are told.
Every package shows both units on them and that doens't affect the printing costs but people can see both and use the units they prefer. It simply does not matter in everyday life. In engineering there is no argument that SI is superior. So I use both, and I like it that way.
i'm from the philippines and we are generally a metric country. however, there are certain instances when the imperial system is used. it is often done in sizes in hardware parts like pipes where we have 1/4", 1/2", etc. in those cases, it will be much harder to convert to metric as 1/4" is 0.635cm and 1/2" is 1.27cm are not of typical sizes like 0.5, 0.25.
anyway, i have been accustomed to using feet and inches in measuring my height (but uses metric on objects) and pounds for my weight. i have recently converting those to metric and i am quite getting used to it without having to think about the conversion.
at the end, i believe that education in school will make a much bigger impact. having been taught the metric system, it is easier for me to visualize and estimate in those items than in imperial system.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
My generation was taught both systems and taught in school that the metric system was superior and used by the rest of the world. My generation is between 25-30 now. That means we will start to gain power is about 10 years and will be the driving force running the nation in 20 years. With Gen X taking over the nation, and the baby boomers out, you will see quite a shift in US policy. The metric system will be part of that.
Unfortunately, Gen X is actually rather cold, logical, understands technology and does not share all the romantic notions of previous generations. This means that the romantic notions that most individual rights are based upon will likely be ignored in policy decisions. Our understanding of technology means that law enforcement will probably be much more effective. In short, life is not going to be much fun under gen x. I predict that we will sell out even worse than the baby boomers ever dreamed of. And the baby boomers are fairy serious sell outs. They went from being hippies protesting the man and the war to putting us into an even worse war and moving the nation to the closest it has even been to a dictatorship.
All I can says is my faters a cook, my mothers an accountant, and I have one uncle who is a builder, all of them grew up on impiral, moved to Australia under impiral messurments, and later in life where forced to convert, and not one of them, or my grandpernts, or even my great grandpernts ever said 'damm I wish we still used impiral'
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You can buy a length of 2-by-4. But it's not actually a 2x4 inch measure - it's a metric equivalent. Lengths (where I buy timber) are always quoted in metric.
Short yarn: Tesco supermarket (after our ratification of some metrication part of EU law) started quoting prices in £/Kg - great, finally. Then when there apples went over £1/Kg they suddenly changed all the signs to read in very large letter the £/lb value (some signs even illegally missing off the Kg value). I then found it very difficult to work out how much the fruit was having got used to the metric version. They are not so bad now. So I can understand the reluctance but it only takes a couple of months to tune into the new weights.
I'm a Canadian living in the US. Temperatures are about the biggest thing that bothers me down here. Most groceries have the metric equivalents written in smaller letters, and portion sizes are usually the same as in Canada anyways. So it doesn't bother me very often, unless I am buying fountain pop, and someone tells me the drink sizes in ounces. Then I will just give them a blank look for a minute, and ask to see the cups. I also had difficulty when mailing a letter. I was quoted prices by the ounce. But the guy working there converted it to grams for me right off the top of his head (I was grateful).
But I have a fast way of converting Fahrenheit to Celsius, with a reasonably small margin of error for common values. 100F is more or less the same as 40C. Every degree in Celsius is about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. So if someone tells you that it's 80 degrees, you can guess that it's about 30C. It isn't exact, but it's within about 5 degrees, which is good enough for the most part. It at least tells you what to wear.
Just do it.
it as the time it takes for Cs-135 to vibrate 9,192,635,770 times. Is it the same lenght of time as the parent comment?
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
The advantages of using a common system across the globe are obvious. The metric system is good enough. We should use it.
BUT...there are significant advantages to our system in day-to-day life. Inches and feet are more useful than meters in daily life, the metric degree is too big for weather forecasting, and perhaps most important, powers of two are actually more useful on rulers than powers of 10 (1/64 of an inch is smaller than 1 mm, and 1/10mm can't be measured on an affordable ruler).
I'm sure these have been noticed by lots of the individuals who oppose switching to the metric system, and they help strengthen their resolve.
*I* am for the conversion; the disadvantages can be coped with, and it seems to me it's a net win to use the same thing as everybody else.
You know, the reason a US gallon differs from an Imerial gallon... after the war Britian did a system upgrade and wouldn't sell us a license :)
--
It is not even so much as that the rest of the world doesn't exist. It's more like out of sight, out of mind. The grand-parent is correct that most Americans will never have any contact with people from another country (Outside Canada or Mexico). The same thing is true that most Europeans will not have any contact with Americans. Honestly, with a giant body of water between the two it isn't exactly easy. Planes don't count. Most people don't make day trips by plane :) I can easily get to Canada with in 2 hours, less if it is a slow day at the border. I can't say the same about France or Germany. But now I'm rambling. So I'll stop.
--
Could some of the reticence to use the metric system be linked in some ways to the fact that it was invented by the French?
Grams, litres, meters were created in the 18th century in France as a way to unify the disparate units that were used at the time and have a unified system that simplified trade (no more inconsistent regionally-used units) and help standardise technology and simplify science.
I'm pretty sure the long reticence of the British to using SI in everyday life is probably due partly to not giving in to the French on that front: politically, it probably was seen as dangerous to try to enforce a unit system that came out of the ideas of the Revolution.
In the UK there is still a mix of imperial and SI in everyday life but the younger generations tend to only learn SI at school. Of course everyone knows their weight in stones and pounds and their height in feet and inches but at last meters and kilograms are slowly being accepted and the Fahrenheit is almost on its way out.
For the US, it's a huge economical issue: moving to SI would take at least 2-3 generations and the cost would be staggering.
It's not an impossible thing to achieve, but in the current political climate, I see no politician having the guts to push this on the people and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be long before some douchebag TV host starts reminding people that SI was invented by the French and is therefore anti-American...
The US already is mostly metric. Ask any auto mechanic stuck with a ton of SAE wrenches and tools. The same applies to every other product made for export - they couldn't be sold otherwise. All science is conducted in metric, including medicine and related disciplines as well. Again, the rest of the world would have to go through contortions converting things to replicate scientific results. It is just consumers who rail against it. It happens in all convert countries to some degree - Britain and Canada are examples. Canada, though, has a somewhat different problem. As the US's largest trading partner much food flows back and forth across the border. Since rural people are the metric sceptics, here and in the US, the measurement of that food is in US terms, but Canadian labels show the metric equivalents.
First off, the metric system is the only system that has been officially recognized as a legal system for trade, in 1866.
Secondly, the existing Imperial system was officially based on the metric system in 1893, known as the Mendenhall Order.
(References.
So, we're already using Metric. We just use funny names for cm, g, and l. Those of us who are into unilateral, pre-emptive metrification use the regular names, instead of the funny names, and eventually we'll win. Nobody ever changes anyone else's mind: you just wait for the fogeys to die off and the revolution will be successful.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
And the idea of a font "size" is actually fairly arbitrary and fuzzy. It's generally defined as the smallest line spacing so that the descenders of one line do not collide with the ascenders of the line below. But there are many cases where this rule is violated. Consider it more like women's dress sizes rather than relating to a specific dimension.
The other factor that is lost in modern digital typesetting is that the point size does not refer to the size of the letter, but rather to the size of the piece of type on which that letter was cast. A 12 pt piece of TYPE was indeed 12 points high, but the letter was somewhat smaller because it had to fit on that piece of type. Because of that, a 12 point letter could be (and often was) different sizes, depending on the font, although the actual piece of time was the same height.
Yes I know there are advantages to both imperial and metric systems. The biggest problem with imperial systems, imo is that they differ from one country to the next and so, for example, a gallon in the states is smaller than a gallon in the UK. Also conversion between imperial and metric units is difficult since there are no exact matches.
Why not alter the imperial measurements so that (1) they are the same everywhere and (2) they match a close metric unit. To help reduce confusion we could have a metric/imperial name for them. Note that this is already done for some units (the metric ton is equal to 1000 kilos but is close to an imperial ton which is 2000 lbs). We could do this for lots of measurements (note that from this point forward the "metric imperial" units shown are not real, just imagined)...
metric ton = 1000 kilos (already done)
metric lb = 500 grams (metric ounce would be based on 1/16 of a metric lb)
metric yard = 1 meter (or metre, take your pick) (not really necessary, since we could just call it a meter, but it becomes a base for conversion of metric foot, metric inch, etc.)
a metric mile gets converted to 2000 metric yards (meters) or 6000 metric feet, so a metric mile becomes significantly longer than a mile but not so much as to throw off our sense of what a mile is and becomes easy to convert to km (2 km per metric mile).
metric miles per gallon is easy to convert to liters/100km (divide 200 by the metric miles per gallon so 20 metric miles per gallon = 200/20 = 10 liters/100km)
km/h is exactly twice the number of metric miles per hour (Americans will love this because we would get to drive faster for the same speed limit since 70 metric miles per hour is actually 87 miles per hour).
metric gallon = 4 liters (or litres, take your pick) hence:
metric quart = 1 liter (not really necessary, but there for completeness, it would probably just be called a liter)
metric pint = 500ml (you can still have your pint of beer and it's not too far off from what it used to be)
metric cup = 250 ml (already done) (metric liquid ounce based on 1/8 of a metric cup)
temperature conversion is rather difficult and may be best left alone.
by pushing countries to new units such as these it becomes easy to convert and Americans can still feel that they haven't lost their old units. Unfortunately it will also create some confusion when you need precision measurements to line up with old work. We can solve this for tools by keeping the old imperial measurements for them and using metric tools for the new system.
Anyways, just a thought.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
If the issue ever comes back to Congress, I'll be it's a matter of days before somebody decides to replace "Imperial" system with "Freedom" system.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Brits still weight themselves in Stone.
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Of course if someone wanted 4mm fonts they would need to type in 11.3394pt in the current system, but of course we all know that fonts are especially right when they are at even numbers of points rather than millimeters. What the hell is a point anyway? Millimeters are used in carpentry, particle physics and trade, points are just another unit made up for one purpose that doesn't really need its own system of measurement.
No, if you want 4mm fonts in any modern and competent page layout program, you simply type "4mm", and the magic of computers works it all out for you.
If you think points are "just another unit made up for one purpose that doesn't really need its own system of measurement", then you have just proven that you know absolutely nothing about typography. Typography and graphic design are really rather elegant subjects that incorporate an incredible amount of mathematics. I suggest you read Robert Bringhurst's "The Elements of Typographic Style" for a thorough introduction.
yes, he's from Guyana.
SI is not about division by 10.
It is about almost not needing any calculation at all, since the few fundamental units is a basis for everything else.
How much energy does a 100 Watt bulb burn in a minute? Immediately it is 60 kilojoule, since Watt is defined as "Joules per second".
How much energy does the same bulb burn in a minute for calories? C'mon, imperial people, bring out your calculator, punch fast, and check twice!
how do I get the cesium atom to sit still so relative motion between it and the detector doesn't cause relativistic shifts in the measured length of the second?
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Anyone that works in a real scientific or engineering profession doesn't work with the English Imperial system. Have you ever seen a lab tech measure anything in "cups" or "table spoons"?
I don't even think I've ever seen pipets labeled in anything other than mL. Fluid ounces? Please!
The only people using the Imperial system are either watching their speedometer or cooking (in America).
And as for your fancy "European" scientists, ask them where the Imperial system came from...
What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do?
Wait, did I miss something? I thought the US was still an economic superpower. Who do we need to "catch up" to? Seriously, I mean, I know other countries are catching up to us, and the tables may turn sometime relatively soon, but we're not exactly way behind.
or else!
Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy.
I don't know, it hasn't seemed to have worked out too well for Europe. =)
While I say that somewhat tongue in cheek, America seems to be doing fine with the imperial system. It's not like we're growing crops of scientists who can't figure powers of 10.
Living in Canada we still have a mix of imperial units being used. People know what a mile is and what an inch is. Pounds and Feet/Inches are commonly used to describe weight and height for people (as well as food sold by the weight; although food sold by volume is almost exclusively sold in Litres).
Everything else is mostly in metric. Even then people still some resistance to metric units such as L/100km and instead use the miles per gallon. Ironically this one actaully illustrates the need for standardization. MPG in Canada is measured in Canadian gallons which is different from US gallons.
The one thing that I don't readily auto-convert in my mind is temperatures in F vs C. Other than 32F = 0C and 100F ~ 37C, everything in between isn't as clear without actually doing some calcuations.
Metric is standard but imperial units are still understood because of US influences.
if you teach metric to all of the children from kindergarten on up, this will help adoption.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Most people in the US have very little if any contact with any else in the world besides possibly a chat room on the internet....so, no one here generally sees any reason to change to 'go along' with the rest of the world. They don't see or touch the rest of the world, so, it pretty much doesn't exist to them.
Could not resist, and don't get me wrong, please.
Despite of your accurate describtion, the US armies are all over the world. Everywhere the US thinks they have to have their fingers in. They want the oil, the resources and gives the rest of the world the polution and "way of live" ideas back. They want us to buy your gene food, they want us to buy your hormon poisened meat. If a european country has a law that regulates how much medical or hormon particles my be in meat (for safty of children e.g.) and banishes the trade of it, the USA threaten to answer this with e.g. import taxes on european cars.
You don't want to compete with your agility on our markets, you want us to adapt our markets to your needs. I don't think that europeans hate you, as one of the guys answering to you said. But surely lots of people in the poor areas of the world indeed do.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I did not quite understand your point, however this:
... and certainly every state has its own millitary aparatus, including Air Force, Navy, Army, Special Forces and in 2 cases nuclear forces.
// probably not a perfect analogon as NAFTA is focusing on trade while the EU is also harmonising basic legal systems
But the reality is that an EU 'nation' is economically, and militarily equal comparable to an individual US state. Is not accurate. Every EU state is equal to the USA, not a state of the USA. Heck, we don't even have the same currencies in all states of the EU
Basically from a federal systems point of view it is more or less like this:
NAFTA = EU
USA = France, Germany, UK, etc.
A single state in USA > a federal state in Germany (probably a USA state is similar to a canton in Swizerland, not sure)
After all it is not the EU that has one single seat in the UN security council but it is the USA + France + UK + Russia + China, AFAIK.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
And fucking hot
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
Don't mistake the will of corporations and the government with the common American.
The average American will never meaningfully leave the United States, and has no frame of reference to the rest of the world. Hell, I've known plenty of people who've never, or rarely, left their homestate. That was the grandparent's point.
In your rant, you seem to be confusing these normal Americans with large corporations and the government. Normal Americans have very little influence over these dealings.
Length - Metre
Mass - Kilogram
Time - Second
Electric Current - Ampere
Thermodynamic Temperature - Kelvin
Amount of Substance - Mole
Luminous Intensity - Candela
So the sum of angles in a triangle should be an irrational number. Yea, that's smart.
And 1.57 is a corner is not as intuitive as 90 is a corner. Why work with decimals when you don't have to?
But because of the internet you can easily get in contact with someone from europe. In fact, it seems you are not like most people, because you are in contact with a european right now.
Sigs are bad for your health
Let's rename Celsius as "Freedom Degrees", kilometers as "Patriot Miles" and liters as "Star Spangled Gallons". That oughta get the American public behind metric.
-deane
The short answer is to just stop being so damn stubborn about it. I don't know why my fellow Americans have such a hard time with metric. It's just multiples of ten, much easier then all the odd numbers that we use. But when I reach for a ruler I automatically use the metric side, so maybe I'm just some sort of demented pervert. My idea is to have a "transitional period" in which all signs and whatnot should have both metric and imperial on them, and over years switch.
now that we are in EU, we changed our money into Euro. And that's like weird. A thing that used to cost 240 tolars is now 1. The big problem isnt converting prices, but to get a feeling for price. I can tell how much is a car worth in tolars but not in . I don't know how much time will it take to get a feel for that.
It was closer to 15 to switch but it was hardly a difficult and intensive process. First schools started teaching it exclusively, then the government started using it, then when everyone was used to it they got rid of the old system. Now even my 80 year old grandfather talks in cms and kgs.
Metric isn't infinitely better than Imperial, though it does make formulas much simpler (barely any coefficients in physics equations) and conversion between large and small units far easier (how many inches in a mile?). The point is that the metric system has just enough merit over imperial to be universally accepted in every country but the United States and two third world, war-torn, unstable crapholes, one being a former US colony.
What I want to know is why the US, a country that violently seceded from the British Empire after it was issued with millions of franks worth of French weapons and using French naval support, who's greatest and most internationally famous monument was donated by France, who quickly instituted decimal currency based on francs and centimes, is so reluctant to adopt a French measurement system and is so enthusiastic in keeping the inferior and confusing system of their former enemy.... I'm not saying I like the French or anything, I'm just saying that Americans should universally like them.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
...unless you're in Scotland where a good number of pubs sell spirits (inc whisky) in 1/4 gill measures... :-) ( I guess they are moving over to what ever that is ml but I think they'll take some time about it...)
Lighten up my friend. I think we're all just having a laugh discovering how many different systems of measures we're all using even in this small corner of the world...
You can count to 1024 on your fingers if you use binary; also known as digital; digit, for "finger".
Binary arithmetic is an ancient art. It's not something new. It should be a requirement for all computer geeks to learn to do on one's fingers.
Plus, 2 is only divisible with 1 and itself, and is a prime even if neglected. Using a prime for the base of number systems is optimal for numeric operations.
All rites reversed 2010
Energy is in Joules (J)!
As far as I understand it, relativity does not apply to quantum mechanic oscillations ... maybe that's why Einstein didn't like the q.m.
I guess the movement is in the same frame of reference ... so go a head bring out the measurement tools
My car does 28 rods to the hogshead, and that's good enough for me!...
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Mentally and physically. I frankly LIKE the different systems. Variable systems mean diversity.
Plus, as to temperature, remember that baseline is 32F (freezing) and 0C (freezing) and 0K (absolute freeze).
Meters versus Inches/Feet/Yards.
I learned this in measurements. I can convert either precisely (precise math) or quickly on the fly (quick estimate math) 100 meters ~ 110 yards ~ 330 feet (an no, I didn't look up a metric calculator). I just know, because i've had to deal with machinery in both systems.
Some things are nicer in metres, others are nicer in inches. And quite honestly, the inches/standard system is more fun, IMHO, because it uses a more varied system of unit translation / sub units. The metric system strives for the typical one world everything.
Pretty soon we'll do the same for language, if measurements go that way. And I really hope we do not. I like travelling to different places, or learning new things, and this will be ONE less thing for my kids to learn when they grow up. So I hope you socialists "demanding" that your politicians PUSH this thing on the rest of us that might not want it, learn that "variety" is as important as "sending someone to a gulag for not wanting to use metric".
I grew up on metric, and now I'm living in standard. Love'em both. I want to see them both around. If you want to FORCE me to use only one, then go walk out onto a an Israeli battle field with the UN flag taped to your forehead.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I went to 'Freedom to Measure'. I read this:
I followed the 'search engine' link, which went to http://www.hostess.com/womanhood/f2m/Search.htm
It didn't work, so I manually went up to http://www.hostess.com/
There is a search engine!
But there were no hits for metrification.
Jeff Freeman
There are proposed metric units to measure type, but they are not offically part of the SI.
Err... Aside from the Japanese Q (0.25 mm, i.e. a quarter of a mill), the only (to my knowledge) and most common proposed metric unit to measure type is the millimetre. That is very much officially a part of the SI.--And why should we use anything else, when it would either be a synonym (e.g. 1 pt (metric) = 1 mm) or add another complicated conversion that metricating should be removing (e.g. 1 mm = 4 pt (metric)). In fact, what metric typographic systems disagree with is what should be measured: Do we simply convert 12 point to (rounded) 4.25 mm? should we measure the tallest character? cap height? ascender height to decender depth? x-height? Of course, the question of what to measure is very much outside of the scope of the SI...
Personally, I feel that font sizes of the form 'xheight/linehight mm' (e.g. 1.5/5 mm) has much to recommend itself, and I have abused LaTeX until I'm able to actually design my documents with such specifications. Of course, I don't suppose anyone will ever notice that my Computer Modern Roman/Times/Junicode/... is neither quite 10 pt, nor 11 pt, but something in between.
Look out!
2x4s are cut when the wood is freshly cut and wet. They are cut to exactly 2" x 4". The wood is then dried and shrinks to approx. 1.5" x 3.5".
If you ever work on a house built before about 1940, the walls will probably be made from "true" 2x4s. They would dry the wood before cutting it.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
"The USA learns the Metric system, and the rest of the world learns to speak English. Seems reasonable to me."
Actually I'd rephrase that as "The USA learns the Metric system and learns to speak English. Seems reasonable to me."
--cros13
Wouldn't the metric system use temperatures in kelvin?
hen don't shift units. Use kilo feet or centi-miles. The reason you are decimal shifting in the metric system is precisely because you are Not shifting units. kilometers, meters and centimeters are all the same units. Nothing prevents you from using decimal english units and decimal point shifting. that's how they do it in machine shops. In the metric system, a unit shift is like going from cgs to MKS where mu and epsilon change scales and all of maxwells equations require conversions.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's dead easy. Zero's cold, ten's cool, twenty's warm, thirty's hot.
(Cue some Canadian piping up with a Pythonesque "Zero? Cold? In my day it were minus thirty in the summer! And we were the lucky ones!" etc.)
Is that supposed to be funny? What I do is irrelevant to this discussion. What's your job? e-thug?
...when you pry my yardstick out of my cold, dead hand.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
It's because the cowardly French were the first to adopt it.
Yes, I know. In natural units, time and length are the same as 1/energy. Since a second is really quite a long time, hence TeV-1.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
actually, relativity does apply to any measured time interval, qm or otherwise, and to any resonant frequency measurement (example: red shift). but that doesn't really come into play for measuring a resonant frequency of the moving atoms of a gas, cooling the gas just means less noise in measurements. So I was just being a wise-ass.
Einstein didn't like the probability instead certainty aspects of qm.
"And the problem is? "
Calling force, kilograms. In the GP post, kilograms was required in lieu of pounds. Do you think those Market Traders are reporting actual SI mass? Your example is obviously true but in reality the cost of those bannans is based on how much force they apply to the scale at the check-out stand.
Yes, the mm is an offical unit. But it isn't endorsed by anyone as the unit to measure fonts. (As you mention the Q is one other proposal.) And before you say you can measure any length in mm, if you note my post, it's not quite that simple and there would be a lot of argument as to how to do it.
Personally, I feel that font sizes of the form 'xheight/linehight mm' (e.g. 1.5/5 mm) has much to recommend itself.
I don't see any advantage myself. Why do would you actually care how many mm the x-height is? And the problem is that you immediately have to use tenths of mm, at least point specced type is mostly in integers (or halves).
Tradition is an important factor, I can put my type ruler on a book published 100 years ago and read off the type size and leading, and it's almost always simple integers. Integers are pleasant to work with, and the whole idea of metrication is to simplify.
http://metric.org/ - US Metric Association.
http://gometricamerica.org/ - He's trying to drum up support and get people moving
http://gometric.us/ - A wiki that's just started and is trying to get something actually happening rather than wallowing in imperial measures for the next 20 years.
End dual-measurement, let's finish going metric!
http://gometric.us
"Heck, we don't even have the same currencies in all states of the EU ... and certainly every state has its own millitary aparatus, including Air Force, Navy, Army, Special Forces and in 2 cases nuclear forces."
Its called the Euro. You rolled all your currencies up into the Euro so that you would have a currency that could compete economically with the US.
I admit I don't have a link handy because it has been awhile since I looked at the numbers. But as of about 5 years ago the US military budget was greater than that of every nation in Europe combined. I seriously doubt we are spending less on defense under the bush administration. It is really quite simple. You might be able to compete with a 10bil dollar military if you have a 5 bil military, but there is no possible way a 5 bil dollar military could compete with a 250bil military. And that ignores the fact that the UK is practically a US territory and would side with the US in any military conflict. The only credible threat to the United States, in the world, is China.
In Europe you have a bunch of itsy bitsy countries. As a general rule the ultimate strength a nation can control is practically limited by natural resources. Individual EU nations may be recognized as sovereign in the UN but they only control military and national resources that are comparable to that of a single US State.
The UN's own power is over-stated. The US may only get one vote at the table but that doesn't mean a firm gaze from a US rep doesn't command most of the table. If the UN votes contrary to US interest, the US has always and will always simply ignore the UN and do as it wants anyway. It isn't as if the other nations of the UN actually have the power to force the US to recognize their mandates.
Personally I think the distributed power of the EU is a good thing. I don't think it is a good thing that a single nation has amassed the power of the US. Even if it is my own nation. But pretending the doesn't have the power it does out of some sort of homeland pride will only make the problem worse.
I can go into any shop in Moycullen and ask them to slice me a pound of bacon. I'll get 500 grams of bacon, but they will take the order in avoirdupois.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Yes, the mm is an offical unit. But it isn't endorsed by anyone as the unit to measure fonts.
I am confused. Who needs to endorse it for it to be a proposed unit? Isn't that the point? Or are you saying you're unaware of any actual proposals to use millimetres to measure type?
if you note my post, it's not quite that simple and there would be a lot of argument as to how to do it.
Again, I'm confused as unless I misunderstand you it was my post that said that.
Why do would you actually care how many mm the x-height is? And the problem is that you immediately have to use tenths of mm, at least point specced type is mostly in integers (or halves).
Well, yes, but point-specced type is frequently two significant figures (10 point, 16 point, 72 point), whereas millimetre-specced type could also be two significant figures (1.5 mm, 2.7 mm, 3.0 mm; or 1 2/4 mm, 2 3/4 mm, 3 mm). The x-height is convenient because almost everything with type has lowercase letters so there's almost always something to measure off, and because most fonts look the same size if they've got the same x-height. It's not always going to be the best option, but it seems to me it will usually be a more useful than anything else.
Integers are pleasant to work with, and the whole idea of metrication is to simplify.
Simplify yes, by having all units of measurement for a given dimension differ only by powers of ten. If we're simplying by trying to make sure everything can be measured with integers, we'll end up with so many different units with different conversions (that, or measure everything in yoctametres).
Look out!
the error if memory serves me correctly is about 1 in 1000, so when your shoot a mortar 4500 meters it'll be of 4.5m which is insignificant since the burst is 35m, usually the wind will blow it off that much. You're defiantly correct for long-range stuff like missiles, for artillery we were basically shooting from an estimated position to an other estimated position, and corrects being given from a third estimated position. You have to realize that I'm an old fart, and we did it all manually with a pencil, paper, map and a firing table; now a days they got digital computers, laser range finders and GPS so they had better be able to drop steel in your back pocket with one round.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It wasn't too long ago that the English tried to breed-out their neighbors. Perhaps we need to think about this; if we might get the federal government to mandate metrics in our public schools, we'd all be speaking SI in a matter of years. Bubba can complain if he wants to, but little Jimmy will be driving grandpa Bubba's butt back to the home at 50kph soon.
~~~~_/)~~~~ M.Berk
The U.S. shouldn't convert to the metric system, but the duodecimal system.
I said an official unit, part of the SI, not a "proposed" unit.
Again, I'm confused as unless I misunderstand you it was my post that said that.
Well, we're both confused as I don't know what "that" refers to.
Well, yes, but point-specced type is frequently two significant figures (10 point, 16 point, 72 point), whereas millimetre-specced type could also be two significant figures
I was talking about integers, i.e. no decimal points (usually), not significant figures.
The x-height is convenient because almost everything with type has lowercase letters so there's almost always something to measure off, and because most fonts look the same size if they've got the same x-height.
Yes, but it's only the relative x-height that matters. Whether you measure it in Angstroms, twips or points, doesn't matter. You just need to know that Adobe Garamond has a smaller x-height (392)Bookman (502). Whatever the units, it's the ratio that's important. And I'm reading these out of the AFM files, which would have to be redefined and rounded up or down if metrication was imposed, making a nightmare of compatibility, and vast expense to everyone who uses fonts professionally.
Simplify yes, by having all units of measurement for a given dimension differ only by powers of ten. If we're simplying by trying to make sure everything can be measured with integers, we'll end up with so many different units with different conversions (that, or measure everything in yoctametres).
When do you ever need to convert a font dimension to an absolute length? Perhaps if you're using display type, making a poster, you may want a capital to be 40mm, or 4m high. But for that you use a drawing app, and that usually does have the ability to measure type in any unit. So the computer takes care of any complications of conversions. However, I often do make hand calculations of font sizes and leading when laying out a book, and in that case it's just simpler to use integers.
As I said, if starting with a clean slate, I could imagine a metric point of .0001 m, but the quad is just a stupid hybrid unit. No SI units use a factor of 4. Possibly as the computer power becomes less and less a limiting factor (I still remember people rendering pages overnight, where now it's seconds) we could transition to microns, where 10 pt text would be something like 350 microns, a loss of simplicity but would allow precision without fractional sizes. But this is unlikely to happen for at least the next decade or two, I think.
Damn moderators these days.
Side from the severe economic penalty to changing to a system that isn't even based off of anything real (i.e. what it was originally supposed to be based on we now know is wrong), there is also the rebel factor. The ability to not let the leaders tell us what to do. We aren't mindless like other countries that simply complied. Ok, that probably isn't fair, Like other countries that after great debate caved into a simple measuring system that any idiot could use. I know because I have seen complete idiots use Metric.
I can remember there was the idiotic attempt a few years ago to switch to metric time. See http://zapatopi.net/metrictime/ . So clearly Metric isn't "universal" as proponets claim it is.
It would be nice if we all did use the same measurement, whatever it is. Personally I don't care because I use both. I think within the next say 20 years SAE will die out. It is already on the run now. I'll keep my SAE sockets around so I can still work on older stuff. Just need more time to let the older folks die out, then for better or worse it will be a Metric world.
Part of the reason for sticking with the imperial system is that it would be too costly to convert industrial machinery to metric. I would guess that the effort hours that were spent preparing for Y2K would be dwarfed by the effort to reprogram industrial controls and modify tooling. The useful life for industrial machinery is often 10-20 years. And the software is usually static, not meant to be upgraded or modified.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
my fellow americans do not start measure bytes in dozens and length of nucleotide sequences in kilodaltons, I am fine.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Here in Australia we'd probably change that to: Zero's freezing, ten's cold, twenty's cool, thirty's warm, forty's hot. And from personal experience 46-50 is stinking hot.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
What's going to happen to all those air miles I've accumulated?
Well never get anywhere until we start thinking in metric terms on a mass scale. That means initially setting up road signs to list speeds in both miles & kilometers initially. And requiring auto manufactures to include kilometers on all car's speedometers. Once the nation has slowly switched over all of it's road signs to the dual option listing we can then switch over all new road signs to Kilometers.
I said an official unit, part of the SI, not a "proposed" unit.
.0001 m, but the quad is just a stupid hybrid unit. No SI units use a factor of 4.
Still confused... The SI doesn't define measurements for particular things. The SI has never said that people's height, table widths and pool depths should be measured in metres or centimetres or any other dimension. The SI has no business saying that font sizes should be measured in millimetres, and never will. The millimetre has been proposed as a metric measurement for font sizes. The millimetre is an official SI unit for length. Therefore, there is at least one official SI unit which has been proposed as a metric measurement for font sizes, and your original statement, "There are proposed metric units to measure type, but they are not offically part of the SI", is false or is based on incorrect understanding or doesn't make sense.
Well, we're both confused as I don't know what "that" refers to.
Pardon me, the difference in opinion on things which should be measured by millimetres when specifying font sizes.
I was talking about integers, i.e. no decimal points (usually), not significant figures.
True, but if you got used to the single decimal point, you'd barely even see it. That's why I changed to talking about significant figures. When I'm adding or subtracting money, I tend to ignore the decimal point and just work in large values of "cents", and put in the decimal point again at the very end...
Yes, but it's only the relative x-height that matters. Whether you measure it in Angstroms, twips or points, doesn't matter.
Well, yes. I thought it was a given that I thought millimetres were the optimal choice. Most proposals I've seen for using millimetres for measuring type cover this well and in more detail than I could on a slashdot post, so I suggest you read one. But really, it comes down to the same reason why I don't think we should be measuring tabletops in inches and everything else in (centi-/milli-/kilo-)metres. (OTOH, you appear to have had professional experience in the area, so there might be something more practical than "tradition" and "argh, decimal point" that you have on your side I haven't thought of.)
Whatever the units, it's the ratio that's important. And I'm reading these out of the AFM files, which would have to be redefined and rounded up or down if metrication was imposed, making a nightmare of compatibility, and vast expense to everyone who uses fonts professionally.
I see absolutely no reason why a program that is generally designed around metric font sizes should suddenly be forced not to be able to deal with legacy fonts and documents that use traditional point sizes. What rounding (if any) that occurs would surely be no worse than the fact that a lot of American software is eventually able to tell me I'm using a page of width 20.9996 mm.
As I said, if starting with a clean slate, I could imagine a metric point of
That, at least, is a point on which we can agree.
Look out!
Yes, minus thirty degrees Celsius IS cold cold cold. Where I live we have it every five, ten winter or so. Standard is minus ten to minus five.
:)
In the spring, and when the temperature rises to minus five, your hormones go banana and you're in a constant smile and all the girls are beautiful!
Metres are a unit of length. "Fonts" do not have a length. A digital font is a collection of hundreds, or thousands, of graphic designs. Just where you place your ruler to measure the size, in metres or furlongs, has to be defined. And there are differences of opinion. If you look at visually similar fonts from different foundries, you often find that if printed at the same point size, they are in fact obviously very different in "size".
"There are proposed metric units to measure type, but they are not offically part of the SI", is false or is based on incorrect understanding or doesn't make sense.
You apparently use mm, and you mentioned the quad. Those are proposed metric-derived units for measuring type. Does that make sense/is correct/true?
I see absolutely no reason why a program that is generally designed around metric font sizes should suddenly be forced not to be able to deal with legacy fonts
The reverse however is not true. "Legacy" software, utilities, and interpreters embedded in hardware will have problems with the new fonts and/or page description language. If you look at the PostScript page description languiage, or PDF, the point is ubiquitous. It's doable, of course, but at a cost. What benefits are there: please explain how my life will be easier?
True, but if you got used to the single decimal point, you'd barely even see it.
I'm familiar with the concept of the decimal point. If I had to use them I'd manage, but given a choice I prefer integers.
Well, yes. I thought it was a given that I thought millimetres were the optimal choice. Most proposals I've seen for using millimetres for measuring type cover this well and in more detail than I could on a slashdot post, so I suggest you read one
There were a bunch of metrication zealots who crossposted that in a font newsgroup a while ago. They got flamed to a crisp. I read it, I understand it, I still prefer the current system.
But really, it comes down to the same reason why I don't think we should be measuring tabletops in inches
I don't think the issues are the same at all. If I was multiplying by 25.4 and dividing by 72 every day I might see some utility in using metric units. But I NEVER need to convert font sizes to anything else. (If I was a signwriter, perhaps; but I lay out books.)
I'm an American who's trying to use Celsius. A dead-easy conversion formula is double and add 30 (for C->F). It isn't perfect, but it works well for most temperatures. Obviously, F->C, which is probably better for you is subtract 30 and divide by 2.
Yeah, that works a lot better. I should have thought of that myself. I always try to over-simplify things, and get it completely wrong. Thanks man.
Metres are a unit of length. "Fonts" do not have a length.
Ah, I understand your point now. Thing is, it doesn't matter what part of a font you choose to measure, you can always measure it in millimetres. This is why I was confused about your original statement.
What benefits are there: please explain how my life will be easier?
I have found there are applications when being able to think in the same measurements would be useful, instead of having to convert (mostly line spacing rather than x-height)... I am unaware of any application when it would be a noticeable loss, except for legacy concerns and the decimal point (neither of which I thought particularly important--after all, if builders can re-tool, why can't software translate so much easier?).
But as I said, you are the professional and I have only done amateur fiddlings in the area. To me it seems like it would be better if we used millimetres. But if your concerns particularly about the costs involved in with current systems are well-found--something I have not given adequate thought--then maybe I shall repeat that I think millimetres have something to recommend themselves, and that measuring the xheight rather than some arbitrary quantity also does, and leave it at that.
Look out!
Its called the Euro. You rolled all your currencies up into the Euro so that you would have a currency that could compete economically with the US.
;D
No we did not.
The EU has out of my head at least 5 currencies, likely more.
And the rest of your post is slightly out of topic IMHO
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Those Eurocommies with their tricky decimal points. Damn them, damn them all to hell!
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
No animosity. As for x-height, it's an important parameter, but there are others equally so. If you look at an AFM file, it's one of several dimensions listed (eg below). Font classification is a field fraught with arbitrary labels. One company's "bold" is another's "black" or "semi-bold", "demi" (as below) even "medium". "Gothic" can refer to a a 1920s style sans serif, or a German Blackletter.
And if the rest of the world jumped in the ocean....
I fail to see the logic that just because everyone else does something, I need to do something...
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
It's not just Europe - it's the whole rest of the World. And the US only got 4.6% of the world population.
You are a minority! In quite a few countries a political party with less then 5% of the votes are not allowed into parlament.
Martin
SI is indeed Kelvin but for genereal use one used Celsius. Both are only offseted - to get from one to the other only add or subtract is needed.
But I have a fast way of converting Fahrenheit to Celsius, with a reasonably small margin of error for common values. 100F is more or less the same as 40C. Every degree in Celsius is about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. So if someone tells you that it's 80 degrees, you can guess that it's about 30C. It isn't exact, but it's within about 5 degrees, which is good enough for the most part. It at least tells you what to wear.
You must be someplace in the US that's really hot, if you use 100F = 40C (actually it's 104F) as your equivalence point. You might be better off remembering that 20C = 68F, or maybe 30C = 86F.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Despite of your accurate describtion, the US armies are all over the world. Everywhere the US thinks they have to have their fingers in. They want the oil, the resources and gives the rest of the world the polution and "way of live" ideas back. They want us to buy your gene food, they want us to buy your hormon poisened meat. If a european country has a law that regulates how much medical or hormon particles my be in meat (for safty of children e.g.) and banishes the trade of it, the USA threaten to answer this with e.g. import taxes on european cars.
You don't want to compete with your agility on our markets, you want us to adapt our markets to your needs. I don't think that europeans hate you, as one of the guys answering to you said. But surely lots of people in the poor areas of the world indeed do.
Hey! Who is "you" in the above rant? Who is "the USA"? You're talking about three tenths of a billion individuals there, bub - represented by a government that many of them did not vote for. Generalizations like the ones you're making are a big part of the reason that the people of the world don't understand each other.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
I remember being an IT manager at Playboy magazine in the early nineties when Microsoft was trying to get people to switch from Word Perfect/Lotus 1-2-3 to Microsoft Office. MS could get IT departments to want to switch by making it so that everyone else's offerings were unstable... but how could get they get the rank and file computer users to go along? If enough department managers didn't want to learn the new software, the IT department would be told to keep trying to support the old stuff.
:-)
MS shenanigans aside, here's how MS got the a bunch of people who *hated* computers and insisted they didn't have so much as five minutes to spare; to learn a whole new software suite.
They had built-in translations. You could use all the same weird Lotus commands in MS Excel, and they'd still work. But they'd work by showing a demonstration of the corresponding Excel commands. You could set the translation demo to run *almost* fast enough that it could be ignored. But eventually, the knowledge sunk in, person by person, until everyone was comfortable using the native MS Office commands. We never did a lick of formal training because they all insisted they didn't have time for it.
To translate that tactic to Metric System training for America, simply use both measurements for everything for a while. We're already doing this in a number of areas (when was the last time you bought a "gallon" of coca-cola?). While the corporations selling things like to do this because it's easier to increase profits when consumers can't readily compare the value of a 2 liter bottle to the value of a gallon bottle, it is up to the government to dictate that both measurements must be used in consumer products, and that both measurements must be used in public works. Speed signs should have limits in both miles and kilometers. But the Microsoft way is to make the metric measurements *slightly* easier to use. Say they have to be listed first, or slightly larger, or in bold. Oh, you can still the old measurement system, no problem. But you'll eventually work out how the two relate, and gravitate towards the slightly easier path of reading the metric measurements first.
Technically, the next step for the "Microsoft Way" would be start intentionally using inaccurate measurements for non-metric numbers so you grew to mistrust them. And to somehow jack-up the price of using the metric system once it became hard to NOT use. And then replace it every so often with something that required you to upgrade to a more expensive car, and came with a bunch of new features that would only be useful to someone trying to commander you vehicle to pitch penny stocks. Oh yeah, and instead of all this being on behalf of the metric system, it would be on behalf of some 4th-rate system of measurement so inferior to the current measurement system that it could be wholly acquired cheaply enough to leave plenty of cash left over for marketing and dragging out lawsuits for years on end.
But the point is, if the "let people do what they want, but make the behavior you want to see just *slightly* more convenient" method could sell MS Office to companies made up of IT people who loathed Microsoft, and non IT people who loathed computers in general; it could certainly be used to convert America to the metric system.
Yes, there is an organization you can back, and we welcome your support! We are the U.S. Metric Association (USMA), Inc. (see www.metric.org). Founded in 1916, USMA is working constantly to establish the modern metric system (the International System of Units, or SI) as the primary system of measurement in the U.S. Dear thesolo et al., Yes, there is a legislative proposal you can back that will bring metric into the U.S. spotlight. USMA and other U.S. metrication advocates are seeking an amendment to the federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act (FPLA) that will allow U.S. industry the option of labeling U.S. products in metric units only. The current FPLA requires dual U.S.-customary AND metric labeling. The FPLA amendment is needed now, because European law will ban non-metric units in labeling and other documents imported into the EU after 31 December 1999, and a new export burden on U.S. manufacturers will appear if the FPLA is not changed. Yes, there is a U.S. Representative you can contact who supports metrication! He is Representative Vernon Ehlers of Michigan. If he is YOUR representative, write to him and ask him to introduce the FPLA amendment! His contact info is at www.house.gov or by regular mail, phone, or fax at: 2182 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 voice: (202) 225-3831 fax: (202) 225-5144 SI-ncerely, Paul Trusten, R.Ph. Public Relations Director U.S. Metric Association, Inc. www.metric.org 3609 Caldera Boulevard, Apt. 122 Midland TX 79707-2872 USA trusten@grandecom.net
...catching up with the rest of the world, please replace all your units of currency under $5 with coins. There's nothing stupider than trying to feed paper bills into a vending machine so you can buy 355 ml of pop. Er, I mean 12 ounces of soda. Or coke. Whatever. Get rid of the bills.
Forcing change where it makes no difference is a waste of money and effort, and justly is opposed by anyone who thinks we waste enough time in non-productive ways already. Proposals like requiring every map and property deed to be converted to metric convince citizens that anything so stupid and error prone makes the whole metric system suspect.
Products and services which interface with other countries can be, and for the most part are, done in metric. But the idea that metric is in some way better morally is silly. Both systems are arbitrary, the benefit of metric is that it is more common. Let's let common sense and the market choose what and when to convert, not people who treat the issue as a crusade.
I like metric for science and tech stuff, but for everyday items English makes sense.
Hot day? 100 degrees. Cold day? 0 degrees. 100 increments, no negatives. Not -15 and 37 garbage.
Thirsty? Grab a pint of beer. A liter gets warm too quickly.
Family needs milk? Get a gallon. Not a 3.5 L of milk.
Need to measure something? A foot is a natural length estimated with body parts on most people. A meter? not so much.
Same with an inch. A cm is too small to be useful in many cases.
The AA Road Atlas for 2007, published in July 2006, can be found here:
0 1._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V61210859_.jpg
http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/074954872X.
You'll notice a handy-dandy scale of 3.2 MILES per inch.
"And the rest of your post is slightly out of topic IMHO ;D"
You would be mistaken. Let me summarize. When I said that the US comparable to all of the EU and the member nations were comparable to individual US states. I was speaking in terms of REAL economic and military power. Not in terms of political boundries.
An EU nation, commands roughly the same military, and financial power as one of the US states. Therefore, we can for all practical purposes lump the EU together as being worthy of one voice of roughly the same volume as the United States and China. China is a third world nation that is not yet part of the industrialized world. Therefore, half the industrialized world is using the US system, and the other half metric.
Why should the US take on the financial burden of conversion? Why shouldn't the EU pay the cost to convert to the US system? After all, the US system is based upon real things. The EU system is completely arbitrary.
...already use metric. Pick up a copy of a journal from this century.
After all, the US system is based upon real things. The EU system is completely arbitrary.
:-)
You have twelve fingers?
meter:
the fundamental unit of length in the metric system, equivalent to 39.37 U.S. inches, originally intended to be, and being very nearly, equal to one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the pole measured on a meridian: defined from 1889 to 1960 as the distance between two lines on a platinum-iridium bar (the "International Prototype Meter") preserved at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris; from 1960 to 1983 defined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red radiation of krypton 86 under specified conditions; and now defined as 1/299,792,458 of the distance light travels in a vacuum in one second.
Sounds kinda real, if not a tiny bit pedantic. Heh, that last one sounds kind of recursive(?). or is it circular? Maybe the metric system is used more in navigation, while the english system was used for farming and clothing? I'm just making stuff up.
What?
"Sounds kinda real, if not a tiny bit pedantic."
Not at all. They drew a couple lines, decided the distance between them was a meter and then proceeded to determine that light travels 299,792,458 times that distance a second. Then they decided to make the new definition of a meter 1/299,792,458 the distance light travels in a second. And how did they determine how far it was relative to lightspeed to begin with? Well they converted from the US system of course.
Now if they had started with lightspeed and then reduced down to smaller unit based upon it; that would be based on something. Actually that would make a hell of alot more sense than metric or US measurements.
California. I got used to 100=40 this summer, when everyone was whining about how hot it was, and I would be forced to give my trademarked blank stare.
What next? Are you going to suggest we only have 10 mili-hours in a day? Will a dozen donuts now only be 10 and a baker's dozen 11? Can you imagine the look in my wife's eyes when I bring her 10 roses on valentines day? "Honey, it's the metric system, I'm not being cheap."
There's nothing wrong with base 12. Just look at your fingers!!
Temperature: At sea level, water boils at 100C and freezes at 0 Weight: 1Kg of water is 1 liter Distance: 1L of water is 0.1m ** 3
I was refeering to more physical contact. It is difficult to get the full idea of a culture's differences (or similarities) with out experiencing it first-hand, IMHO.
:)
On a similar note i am sure that most Americans don't even think that much about other STATES in daily life. I just know that I wouldn't dislike someone/group of people because of that.
Plus, on the Internet, generally don't tend to think of someone having a nationality, unless we happen to be talking about that
--
That might be the SI base unit but at a fundamental level the universe works in terms of electric charges. The SI system uses current as the definition only because it is easier to measure macroscopic currents rather than charges.
Pretty low on the list.
* Schools in the US are trying to bring about that it is ok to stop trying to prove something and just say a God did it.
* People are trying to claim that the world has "hot" periods even though the one in the last 100 years seems to be "hotter" than any we can prove through history.
* I am sure I can add some things about a certain warmonger president, etc, etc
* Oh, and people still use IE
Yep, need to get the US to use metric. I am not too sure the US can handle multiply by 10, that would just be too difficult.
The US is the Land Of The Free. I think it is getting closer to "The Land of the Free to not give a damn." (unless it directly affects me, then I'll show you exactly what freedom means.)
If you couldn't tell, some of this was sarcasm.
Scott Carr
That is, don't make laws that everything must be in X. Instead make laws that everywhere you mention somthing in non metric formats, you are legally required to also list the metric equivelent. Even on measuring instruments (you have a yardstick? It also has to list the number of centimeters down one side.) Do this for 10 years. Let people get used to the idea. Eventually, the printing/sign people will get cheap and offer the "metric" only versions. Once those become common, then pass a law stating no more non-metric.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
No, I was counting the countries using the metric system - which would include China and India - against the US. OK a bit unfair, there is also Liberia 3,283,000 and Myanmar with whooping 50,519,000. Well Ok, with Burma in is't 5.3% - you got me there. But that still make 94.6% for the metric system.
;-).
Of corse it's just official measuments: Brits still buy beer in pints - that's ok.
And the last carton of milk I bought in GB was labled "1.35 litre/2 pints" - and that's ok as well. As long as litre is bold print
Martin
PS: In the german election system 4.58% does not round up. You Party got 5.000% (or three direct mandates) or goes home. And I expect it's the same in other countries with a 5% border.